Workplace Interventions for Mental Wellbeing

The IOM was contracted by NICE to carry out a systematic review of workplace interventions to promote mental wellbeing at work. The review was carried out using the NICE methodologies for systematic reviews. Initial searches identified a total of 7341 papers. After screening, data extraction and quality assessment, 66 primary studies were included in the review. It should be emphasised that the review focussed specifically on intervention studies, not those designed to identify causes of stress or which proposed intervention strategies without any formal study of their efficacy.

The review highlighted a number of issues with regard to research into mental wellbeing including a lack of consistency in the definitions used to describe mental wellbeing. This was further complicated by the use of a variety of individual interventions ranging from sending out leaflets on stress to massage therapy. The studies were also hampered by poor adherence to intervention regimes and, for organisational level interventions, a lack of management commitment was frequently identified as a problem.

A large amount of material was evaluated within the review and a number of potential interventions might result in positive outcomes, including the positive impact of taking a vacation; changing the shift system; short-term reductions in burnout using a psychosocial intervention course; using multi-facetted training including stress awareness, coping and stress reduction; small group sessions and using paper-based material rather than web-based; computerised CBT; aerobic exercise sessions and transcendental meditation. However, the research reviewed had numerous methodological difficulties and shortcomings and does not provide either sufficient strength of evidence or number of papers to be able to make unequivocal evidence statements. It is hoped that future research can be based on this to provide clearer evidence of effectiveness in the future.

The full review is available from

http://www.nice.org.uk/nicemedia/pdf/MentalWellbeingWorkFinalReport.pdf