Readers' Corner - Mental Health in the Workplace

Michèle Auger, Fred Longley and Edward Popoff
Departmental Library
Source: Workplace Gazette, Vol. 6, No. 4, Winter 2003

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Mental Health in the Workplace

Fitter, Fawn and Beth Gulas. Working in the Dark: Keeping Your Job while Dealing with Depression. Center City, Minn.: Hazelden, 2002.
HRDC HV3005 F57

This guide offers a step-by-step self-assessment approach to help employees protect and manage their working lives while receiving treatment for depression. Topics addressed in a question-and-answer format include how depression manifests itself at work; coping strategies to help the employee during depressive episodes; determining whether the job is the problem and if so, how to handle the situation; deciding whether and how much to tell the employer about the illness; and how to counter discrimination. The appendix lists a selection of American websites dealing with depression in the workplace.

Handbook of Mental Health in the Workplace. Edited by Jay C. Thomas and Michel Hersen. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2002.
HRDC RC967.5 H36

This book discusses workplace mental health issues related to stress or more serious psychological problems. It is organized in five parts. Part I gives an overview of the issues. Part II presents current thinking and research on job stress and its impact on mental and physical health, as well as organizational interventions for reducing job stress and work-family conflict. Part III describes the most common disorders that may affect the workplace, focusing on their effect on the ability to work, causal factors, and treatments. Part IV explores effects in the workplace of behaviour not in standard diagnostic categories, such as anger or grieving. Part V describes how mental health issues should be addressed in designing workplace policies and accommodations for psychological disabilities. 

The Handbook of Work and Health Psychology. Edited by Marc J. Schabracq, Jacques A.M. Winnubst and Cary L. Cooper. 2nd ed. New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 2003.
HRDC HF5548.8 H3813 2003 

This revised edition has been updated with the latest research findings in the new interdisciplinary field of work and health psychology. Following an overview of the underlying concepts of work and health psychology, the book considers specific issues, e.g. new technologies and stress; coping and stress among women workers; and issues of the second career half. Preventive and remedial workplace interventions are surveyed, for example, job design to improve well-being and health, contributions of the learning organization and coaching and counselling. 

Mental Health and Productivity in the Workplace: A Handbook for Organizations and Clinicians. Edited by Jeffrey P. Kahn and Alan M. Langlieb. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 2003.
HRDC RC967.5 M43 

This comprehensive and practical guide uses nontechnical language to describe individual and organizational mental health problems in the workplace and how they can be resolved. It focuses on: occupational concerns that include executive dysfunction, employment uncertainty and office politics; and on organizational issues such as chronic change, work-life balance, and the effects of organizational structure. The book also examines, from a workplace perspective, the most common employee mental health problems, including stress, depression, burnout, personality disorder and substance abuse. 

Mental Health and Work: Issues and Perspectives. Edited by Lou Morrow, Irene Verins and Eileen Willis. Bedford Park, Australia: Commonwealth of Australia, 2002. On internet.
HRDC RC967.5 M46

This book is divided into five sections. The first section provides an overview of the links between mental health and over- and underemployment as well as unemployment. Section Two looks at work and identity over a wide range of themes, including the relationships between race, culture, gender, age and work identity. Section Three concerns work and safety issues, presenting interventions to deal with workplace bullying and violence. Section Four considers the relationship between work, emotion and mental well-being. The final section discusses a range of preventive as well as remedial interventions at the individual and organizational level to enhance mental well-being in the workplace. 

Work and Mental Health: An Employers' Guide. Edited by Doreen M. Miller, Maurice Lipsedge and Paul Litchfield. London: Gaskell, 2002.
HRDC RC957.5 W67

This book aims to describe good practice in the field of mental health at work, and addresses both clinical problems and organizational issues. It provides practical examples of stress management and workplace mental health promotion in programs developed by a number of high-profile organizations in the United Kingdom. 

NOTES

  1. For other available references in French language only, see the French version of the Workplace Gazette/Gazette du travail.
  2. Employees of Social Development Canada and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada can borrow these items from the Departmental Library. Others can borrow them through their own library.