2nd Consortium Meeting: Drawing the Lines of Mental Health Promotion and Intervention in Occupational Settings

On June 10-12, the consortium met for its second plenary meeting, which took place virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 40 experts from the fields of mental health, suicide prevention, depression research, mental illness stigma, occupational health, implementation science, health economics and many more attended the project meeting, most of them from their home offices.

Our highly appreciated Scientific Advisory Board members joined the consortium meeting as well and provided valuable contributions based on their extensive expertise.

Thanks to an excellent structure of the meeting and the unprecedented motivation of partners, the online meeting turned out as very successful. Partner presentations summarized the great progress achieved within all work packages in the past six months. The collaboration between different work packages and small subgroups has shown to be in full progress. Since the project start in January 2020, emphasis was placed on the preparation of the materials, design, and evaluation of the pilot and cluster randomized controlled trial that will focus on improving both, mental wellbeing as well a clinical issues in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), particularly depression and comorbid anxiety.

The core of the project’s intervention, the Hub, will also contain iFightDepression® resources, consisting of a self-management tool and website for people with milder forms of depression. The adaptation and expansion of the tool’s content tailored to the needs of the three different sectors (construction, health and ICT) and SMEs will be a main task in the second half of the year.

In light of these tasks, the consortium will consult experts to gain in-depth knowledge about mental health needs in SMEs in general and particularly in the three targeted sectors, as well as to assess their experience of promoting mental health in the workplace.

If you are a representative of an employer organization, of a trade union, or if you are an occupational health or human resources expert with at least 5 years of professional experience and interested to participate in the survey, please contact us by email or our inquiry form. We are also interested in academic experts and representatives from advocacy groups with knowledge about occupational mental health.

If you are interested in learning more about the project, we warmly invite you to follow our news on our project’s website. You can also contact us directly via email.