Promoting well-being and reducing stigma about mental health in the fire service

Abstract

Purpose – Workplace stress is a particular issue in the fire service. Research suggests this is related to excessive demands, relationships with senior managers, changing roles and exposure to traumatic events. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact on managers of three mental health promotion interventions. First, a locally developed course entitled “Looking after Wellbeing at Work” (LWW), second, an internationally developed training course: Mental Health First Aid (MHFA). Third, an hour-long leaflet session (LS). Design/methodology/approach – This study used a random allocation design. In total, 176 fire service line managers were randomly allocated to one of the three training conditions: LWW, MHFA, or a control condition (LS). Participants completed The Attitudes to Mental Illness Scale (Luty et al., 2006) and a locally developed “Mental Health Stigma Questionnaire” pre- and post-intervention. Results were analysed using a MANOVA. Participants were also asked to complete a general evaluation, rating all aspects of the courses from poor to excellent. In total, 30 participants were also chosen at random to conduct telephone interviews about their experience of the course. Results were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings – The LWW and MHFA courses were associated with statistically significant improvements in attitudes to mental illness and knowledge/self-efficacy around mental health, comparing pre- and post-scores, and comparing post-scores of the two training courses with a LS. The general evaluations of the LWW and MHFA courses indicated the mean rating for all aspects of both training conditions was good to excellent. Two themes were identified across the qualitative interviews: participants described they were more able to recognise and respond to mental health problems; and participants described changing attitudes towards mental health. Research limitations/implications – The strengths of this study are the number of participants, random allocation, and multiple facets of evaluation. The quantitative evaluation is limited, as one of the questionnaires has untested psychometric properties. The control condition was limited as it was only offered for one hour, making comparison with two-day training problematic. The qualitative evaluation was useful in gaining descriptive data, however, it may have been possible to conduct a more in-depth analysis with a smaller number of participants. Originality/value – The results from this study indicate that providing training in mental health awareness and promotion was considered helpful, by managers in the Fire Service and had positive outcomes for attitudes and understanding about mental health. While there are limitations, initial results of training in mental health promotion are promising. Such training has the potential to promote the public's mental health and wellbeing, and improve the quality of life for people with mental health problems.

Effectiveness of training workplace managers to understand and support the mental health needs of employees: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The inter-rater reliability for the screening process was kappa=0.65 (95% CI 0.52 to 0.78). The quality assessment process using the Downs and Black checklist22 identified four papers as ‘good’, three as ‘fair’, and one paper26 was rated as ‘poor’ quality.…”

“…SMD could be calculated using the means, standard deviations (SD) and sample sizes from nine of the studies. For the behaviour outcome in Milligan-Saville et al 25 and for all outcomes in Moffitt et al ,26 sufficient information in the form of p values and sample sizes could be extracted for SMD calculation. The SMD was used to represent the effect size measure in terms of SDs.…”

“…If studies included more than one intervention group,26 or had more than one variable assessing the same outcome,25 the mean effect size was used. For cluster RCTs, effective sample sizes were calculated as described in the Cochrane Handbook 29.…”

Development and Evaluation of Digital Game-Based Training for Managers to Promote Employee Mental Health and Reduce Mental Illness Stigma at Work: Quasi-Experimental Study of Program Effectiveness

“…Evidence of the potential impact of workplace antistigma interventions on managers’ attitudes toward people with mental health problems is generally mixed [ 17 ]. While some studies did not find any significant change in overall attitudes toward people with mental health problems [ 53 , 54 ], others reported improvements [ 56 , 57 ]. In our study, we evaluated not only overall attitude but also specific aspects of attitude, namely avoidance, perceived dangerousness, beliefs about workability and competencies, helping, and responsibility.…”

A New Online Mental Health Training Program for Workplace Managers: Pre-Post Pilot Study Assessing Feasibility, Usability, and Possible Effectiveness (Preprint)

“…There is some evidence to suggest the value of specialised training delivered to managers to promote understanding of the mental health needs of their workers, and to help increase managers' confidence in discussing mental health matters with their staff [2,3,[22][23][24]. Further evidence supports such manager training to shift stigmatising attitudes regarding mental illness [24][25][26][27] and to promote the implementation of positive managerial behaviours to address mental health issues within their team [22,24,26], with an overall positive effect for manager training found across these outcomes [28]. Yet evaluations of a selection of workplace based mental health training programs have been unable to find beneficial effects upon managers' attitudes towards mental ill health [18] or managerial behaviours of mental health issues either reported by the managers themselves, or objectively by their direct reports [18,29,30].…”