PSI is organising four thematic sessions for PSI affiliates on Health and Care worker's issues. The first session, on Monday 20 June, 1-4pm CET "Mental Health & Psychosocial Wellbeing of Health and Care Workers", will be the first step in developing a PSI project on psycho-social and mental health. 

This webinar is open to PSI affiliates only. Simultaneous interpretation will be available in English, French and Spanish.

Register here

Contextual background

Over previous decades workers and communities have faced an avalanche of precarity in everyday life that has led to sharp decline in social wellbeing and mental health. Rising instability in many areas of people’s lives correlated with increasing mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse. Precarious work has played a major part. But so too have neoliberal economic policies that have seen access to basic human necessities become more precarious. Insecure access to housing, health, transport, water, electricity, waste and justice all undermine wellbeing and dramatically increase the risk of vulnerability to mental health illness and exacerbate pre-existing conditions. In short, the economic model we have is affecting our mental health.

Increasingly solutions to these underlying causes have been avoided in favour of pathologizing mental health issues and prescribing more drugs, providing profits to private pharma. However, a more sustainable approach would be to assist people avoid precarity by providing access to universal quality public services available to all on the basis of need. Providing certainty that people’s basic needs will be met is critical to underpinning good mental health. This is more so the greater the vulnerability the person is facing.        

At the same time workers in public services face their own mental health challenges. Health and care work by its nature exposes workers to stressful and destressing situations that can undermine mental health and wellbeing. Even prior to the COVID pandemic understaffing, inadequate remuneration and decent work deficits have led to rising incidence of burnout, and mental health challenges for health and care workers. The COMHEEG report (2016) indicated that we faced massive health workforce recruitment and retention gaps prior to the Pandemic and this concerning situation has been gravely exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. This situation is unjust for workers, lowers standards of care provided to the public and has the potential to collapse already fragile public health systems.

Sticking plaster solutions like outsourced phone counselling or ‘resilience training’ will not tackle the underlying causes of poor mental health in health and social care systems. While adequate individual support of those suffering poor mental health is important, it can be reactive rather than addressing broader root causes. The increasing level of stress and burn-out reported by staff is associated with increasing workloads, little work autonomy, insufficient staffing levels and equipment, inadequate input into service planning, bullying and low pay. However, health and care trade unions need empirical evidence to back up this widely held anecdotal view. 

Aim of thematic session:

This session will be the first step in developing a PSI project on psycho-social and mental health. The project would entail:

• collection of evidence on the link between pay and working conditions and mental health for health and social care workers from a range of countries in the North and South,

• identification of the various ways that trade unions are responding to this challenge, including how these responses are shaped by country and institutional factors.

• supporting affiliates to campaign for policy changes that a) promote health and care workers mental health, including safe and effective staffing levels and working conditions of health and social care workers and b) promote the provision of quality public services as one essential part of national governments’ efforts to address mental well-being of workers more generally, and particularly those exposed to the changing labour markets, insecurity and precarity.

 Thus, in this thematic session we will look at:

1. Evidence from the literature of the link between the provision of quality public services and the well-being of working age populations.

2. The global trends in mental health/well-being of health and social care workforce, and the structural and employment issues underpinning the mental health of health and social care workers.

3. How trade unions are responding to the issue of mental health/wellbeing at work. The national and institutional factors shaping these responses. And how effective trade union action has been and at what levels (locally, nationally, internationally)

4. The policies required globally as well as nationally in selected countries that promote health and care workers mental health