You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 80, Issue 4
  • Universal, selective and indicated interventions for supporting mental health at the workplace: an umbrella review of meta-analyses

Article Text

Article menu
Systematic review
Universal, selective and indicated interventions for supporting mental health at the workplace: an umbrella review of meta-analyses
  1. Clara Miguel1,
  2. Arpana Amarnath1,
  3. Aemal Akhtar2,3,
  4. Aiysha Malik4,
  5. Gergő Baranyi5,
  6. Corrado Barbui6,
  7. Eirini Karyotaki1,7,
  8. Pim Cuijpers1,7
  1. 1 Department of Clinical, Neuro and Developmental Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  2. 2 School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  3. 3 Division of Insurance Medicine, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
  4. 4 Department of Mental Health and Substance Use, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
  5. 5 Society and Health, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
  6. 6 Department of Neuroscience, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy
  7. 7 WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Dissemination of Psychological Interventions, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  1. Correspondence to Clara Miguel, Department of Clinical, Neuro and Developmental Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1081 HV, The Netherlands; clara.miguelsanz{at}vu.nl

Abstract

The current umbrella review aimed to assess and summarise evidence on universal, selective and indicated interventions for mental health at the workplace. This umbrella review forms one of the evidence reviews which were commissioned by the WHO to develop global guidelines on mental health at work. We conducted systematic searches in five bibliographic databases (PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, Cochrane and Global Medicus Index) and included meta-analyses of randomised trials examining psychosocial, physical activity and lifestyle interventions delivered to all general workers (universal interventions), at-risk workers (selective interventions) and workers already experiencing symptoms of mental disorders (indicated interventions). We included outcomes from seven domains: symptoms of mental health conditions, positive mental health, quality of life, work-related outcomes, substance use, suicide-related outcomes and potential adverse effects. We identified 16 meta-analyses producing 66 pooled effect sizes of the examined interventions, mostly on symptoms of mental health conditions (n=43 pooled effect sizes) (eg, burnout, insomnia, stress) and positive mental health (n=15) (eg, well-being). Most of the evidence on universal, selective and indicated interventions was focused on psychosocial interventions, showing small to moderate effects across the various outcomes. Certainty levels according to GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) were low to very low in almost all of the examined outcomes. The results of existing meta-analyses are promising for the use of preventative and early treatment interventions in the workplace. However, the quality and certainty of the evidence were very modest, and further research on the effectiveness of these interventions is warranted.

  • meta-analysis
  • occupational health
  • mental health
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution IGO License (CC BY 3.0 IGO), which permits use, distribution,and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In any reproduction of this article there should not be any suggestion that WHO or this article endorse any specific organization or products. The use of the WHO logo is not permitted. This notice should be preserved along with the article’s original URL.Disclaimer: The author is a staff member of the World Health Organization. The author alone is responsible for the views expressed in this publication and they do not necessarily represent the views, decisions or policies of the World Health Organization.

https://doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2022-108698

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Supplementary materials

    • Supplementary Data

      This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.

    Footnotes

    • Contributors AM, GB, CB and PC conceptualised and developed the study. CM and AAm were involved in all stages of the reviewing process, from the screening of records to data extraction. CM had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and accuracy of the data. AAk, AM, GB, CB, EK and PC supervised the study. CM drafted the manuscript, and all authors critically revised it and provided intellectual content.

    • Funding This review was commissioned by the WHO as part of the WHO Guidelines for Mental Health at Work.

    • Disclaimer The authors alone are responsible for the views expressed in this article, and they do not necessarily represent the views, decisions or policies of the institutions with which they are affiliated.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.