PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Aimée Gayed AU - Josie S Milligan-Saville AU - Jennifer Nicholas AU - Bridget T Bryan AU - Anthony D LaMontagne AU - Allison Milner AU - Ira Madan AU - Rafael A Calvo AU - Helen Christensen AU - Arnstein Mykletun AU - Nicholas Glozier AU - Samuel B Harvey TI - Effectiveness of training workplace managers to understand and support the mental health needs of employees: a systematic review and meta-analysis AID - 10.1136/oemed-2017-104789 DP - 2018 Jun 01 TA - Occupational and Environmental Medicine PG - 462--470 VI - 75 IP - 6 4099 - http://oem.bmj.com/content/75/6/462.short 4100 - http://oem.bmj.com/content/75/6/462.full SO - Occup Environ Med2018 Jun 01; 75 AB - Managers are in an influential position to make decisions that can impact on the mental health and well-being of their employees. As a result, there is an increasing trend for organisations to provide managers with training in how to reduce work-based mental health risk factors for their employees. A systematic search of the literature was conducted to identify workplace interventions for managers with an emphasis on the mental health of employees reporting directing to them. A meta-analysis was performed to calculate pooled effect sizes using the random effects model for both manager and employee outcomes. Ten controlled trials were identified as relevant for this review. Outcomes evaluating managers’ mental health knowledge (standardised mean difference (SMD)=0.73; 95% CI 0.43 to 1.03; p<0.001), non-stigmatising attitudes towards mental health (SMD=0.36; 95% CI 0.18 to 0.53; p<0.001) and improving behaviour in supporting employees experiencing mental health problems (SMD=0.59; 95% CI 0.14 to 1.03; p=0.01) were found to have significant pooled effect sizes favouring the intervention. A significant pooled effect was not found for the small number of studies evaluating psychological symptoms in employees (p=0.28). Our meta-analysis indicates that training managers in workplace mental health can improve their knowledge, attitudes and self-reported behaviour in supporting employees experiencing mental health problems. At present, any findings regarding the impact of manager training on levels of psychological distress among employees remain preliminary as only a very limited amount of research evaluating employee outcomes is available. Our review suggests that in order to understand the effectiveness of manager training on employees, an increase in collection of employee level data is required.