Centre for Mental Health

An evaluation of Centre for Mental Health Workplace Training

"...staff need information on mental health conditions, how to identify early signs and symptoms and most importantly training to enable them to have the confidence to approach someone who is showing signs of distress and signpost them to appropriate help."

-- NHS Health and Wellbeing Interim report,
July 2009

"...we will work with partners to encourage employers to commit to training for managers to support mental health and well-being at work, and give managers the skills to hold supportive conversations."

-- National Strategy for Mental Health and Employment,
December 2009

Mental health at work

The cost of mental health problems to business is just over £1,000 per employee per year, or almost £26 billion across the UK economy. Effective programmes which assist the management of mental health at work can save around 30% of these costs. Yet employer awareness of mental health issues at work in the UK is extremely poor. Most senior managers vastly underestimate the scale of the problem and most think it will never affect their workplaces.

A recent survey of managers also found that managers feel they need more appropriate training and support at work to effectively manage staff experiencing mental health problems. Every day, opportunities to support people experiencing mental health problems to access appropriate treatment and maintain their employment, are being missed in workplaces across the UK.

The benefits of Workplace Training

Centre for Mental Health Workplace Training (formerly Impact on Depression) is a tried and tested programme, based on the Australian national charity beyondblue's highly successful, award winning National Workplace Programme which has trained more than 40,000 employees in over 400 organisations since 2004. During 2008, the Centre piloted the programme in the UK with managers in a range of organisations across the private and public sectors. The evaluation of the pilot showed:

• 97% of managers would recommend the programme to others.
• All managers in the pilot felt significantly more confident about identifying and supporting employees with depression and anxiety and other related conditions (see graphs below)
• The evaluation of the pilot concluded that the training was as effective and applicable in the UK as it is in Australia

The high impact of the training after the pilot

The increase in manager confidence after the pilot programme

Following up 6 months after the training

We carried out an evaluation with the same organisations 6 months after they had received the training.

Articles and related evidence

We have written a selection of journal articles on managing mental health problems at work.

Lockett, H. & Grove, B. (2010). Responding to mental distress at work, part 1. Occupational Health [at Work], 7 2 (24-27).

Lockett, H. & Grove, B. (2010). Responding to mental distress at work, part 2. Occupational Health [at Work], 7 3 (20-23).

Lockett, H. (2010). Making an impact on how mental health problems are managed at work. British Journal of Wellbeing, Vol. 1, Iss. 3, Jun 2010, pp 10-11.

Lockett, H. (2010) Leading from the front: putting the people back into people management. International Journal of Leadership in Public Services, 6 (3) 48-52.

Lockett, H (2010) Why mental health matters HR Review

The Centre for Mental Health Workplace Training programme is based on the beyondblue National Workplace Programme (Australia) and Beyond Blue Limited retains copyright in all materials.