On 10 October, the world will celebrate World Mental Health Day, with the theme "It's time to prioritize mental health in the workplace." This is an apt call to action which the 30 million working women and men that the Public Services International (PSI) brings together globally identify with. Indeed, it is a point we have repeatedly made.

Mental health is more than the absence of mental health conditions.

This is because the mental health of these workers, who deliver public services to us all, across all sectors have been severely undermined over the past decades by work-related stress, psychosocial risk factors and the impact of neoliberal social-economic policies on us as workers. That is precisely why prioritising mental health in the workplace must take into account the need for fundamental changes that put people over profit in both the workplace and the broader society.

As the World Health Organization highlights in the WHO guidelines on mental health at work “Mental health is more than the absence of mental health conditions. Rather, mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stressed of life, to realise their abilities, to learn well and work well, and to contribute to their communities”.

It becomes clear that increasing precarity of work, especially in the public sectors which used to boast of job security in many a country, is enough to undermine the mental health and wellbeing of workers. When this interacts with psychosocial risks factors and hazards, it becomes an explosive situation which must concretely be addressed with a keen sense of urgency.

The World Health Organization also highlights the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic showed the critical role of health and care workers in “caring for the global population” on one hand. But on the other hand, despite applause, which rings hollow in the end, policy makers and employers “have largely failed” in their “duty of care for these essential workers, particularly with regard to their mental health and wellbeing”.

This dire situation must change. As workers, we are not going to simply sit down and hope that governments and employers will just wake up to their duty of care. We have to bring our combined power of analysis and struggle to bear, to bring about the necessary change. That is why PSI commissioned its Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) based at the University of Greenwich to conduct a study on Mental Health and Public Sector Healthcare, with international case studies, last year.

Its findings established that:

“there is a relationship between the increases in mental health problems and work-related stress in the healthcare workforce globally and the imposition of neoliberal policies, as seen through public sector reforms, privatisation, cuts in public spending and the under-investment in public services. These reforms lead to reductions in real pay and deteriorating working conditions, problems of recruitment and retention of public sector workers, which then affect the quality of public services.”

Underlying socio-economic factors that undermine mental health at work equally hollow out the quality of public services to the communities we serve. We thus have a shared cause to unite and fight to roll back the prioritisation of wealth over health that underpins the neoliberal regime in the workplace and society.

Taking the struggle for prioritisation of mental health in the workplace forward, PSI will continue to challenge the global neoliberal “consensus” and its drivers at the international level. At the national level, we will support PSI affiliates to take action on wages and job security, safe and effective staffing for health and care, increased training places and support for trainees, occupational health and safety (OHS) legislation, regulation and training for psychosocial risks, and the harmonisation of OHS legislation.