World Mental Health Day 2024

 

It is Time to Prioritize Mental Health in the Workplace

October 10, 2024: World Mental Health Day, observed on Thursday 10 October 2024, is themed "It is Time to Prioritize Mental Health in the Workplace”. The aim of World Mental Health Day is  to raise awareness about the importance of mental health, to reduce stigma, and promote mental well-being. It serves as a reminder that mental health is an essential part of overall health and encourages individuals and communities to take action in support of mental health. 

The  School of Public Health, University College Cork and National Suicide Research Foundation  are leading the EU-funded project, ‘Promoting Positive Mental and Physical Health in Changing Work Environments’, PROSPERH (www.prosperh.eu), conducting research targeting individual workers, peers, organisations and employers with an evidence-backed health intervention tool designed to enable companies to improve the mental and physical health of their workforces.  

In recent years, rapid changes have occurred in the workplace. New forms of work and work management have arisen, which can affect the mental and physical health of workers in ways, both positive and negative, that are not yet well understood. In 2022, 46% of respondents in a Flash Eurobarometer survey reported being under severe time pressure and work overload, and the costs for work-related depression alone in the European Union are over EUR 600 billion per year. The PROSPERH project will also deliver robust, comprehensive evidence on the impact of changing workplaces on worker’s mental and physical health. 

“World Mental Health Day provides a great opportunity to highlight mental health awareness and research developing new ways to appropriately support the mental health of one another, our co-workers, family and friends. 

To highlight this research and the workplace multi-level intervention being developed, on 11 October 13:00 CET Professor Arensman will present PROSPERH at a webinar alongside four other research projects that collectively make the WISEWORK-C research cluster. Register for the webinar here.  

The five-year PROSPERH Project is the continuation of a long-standing collaboration between 18 organisations committed to improving overall health and well-being. The team, including Prof. Ulrich Hegerl and Carolina Piña of the European Alliance Against Depression and other professionals from occupational health, public health and epidemiology, ergonomics, psychiatry, psychology, implementation science, social sciences and humanities, health economics, multi-country trials and biostatistics, builds on their existing, successful, evidence-based mental health interventions.  

 

For further inquiries please contact:  

EAAD – Carolina Piña

 

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Health and Digital Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. UK participants in Horizon Europe Project PROSPERH are supported by UKRI grant numbers 1010118 for St Mary's University and 10109311 for University of Stirling. Australian participant Griffith University is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council.