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Help! I Need Somebody: Help-Seeking Among Workers with Self-Reported Work-Related Mental Disorders

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Abstract

Purpose

Worker mental health has emerged as one of the most significant challenges in contemporary workplaces. Knowing what intervention is effective is important to help workers adapt to mental health disorders but connecting workers to helpful resources is just as important and perhaps more of a challenge. With the multiple stakeholders involved, mental health disorders arising in the workplace pose specific challenges to help-seeking. The present study sought to explore the lived experience of workers and the personal and contextual influences on help-seeking among workers with work-related mental health disorders.

Methods

A qualitative methodology was employed utilizing purposive sampling to conduct semi-structured interviews with individuals (n = 12) from various occupational backgrounds who had experienced a work-related (self-declared) mental health disorder. A Critical Theory approach was used to inform study design and analysis. Interpretative phenomenological analysis and thematic content analysis were combined to analyze the data.

Results

Three main themes emerged including: (1) self-preservation through injury concealment and distancing themselves from workplace stressors to minimize/avoid internal and external stigma; (2) fatigue relating to complex help-seeking pathways, accumulation of stressors, eroding the worker’s ability to make independent decisions regarding supports; and (3) (mis)trust contributed to resources accessed by participants.

Conclusions

Along with internalized stigma, findings point to the important role of social identity and trust and how these are influenced by relationships and organizational contexts. Findings indicate the need to educate workplace parties such as supervisors on mental health and pathways to help, simplifying pathways to service and removing barriers to help seeking including stigmatizing behaviours. Future quantitative research and intervention development directed at workplace mental health should integrate models and frameworks emphasizing relational and organizational dimensions in help-seeking.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada

    Kara Rutherford, Lara Hiseler & Fergal O’Hagan

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  1. Kara Rutherford
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by KR and FOH. The first draft of the manuscript was written by FOH and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Fergal O’Hagan.

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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study. The Trent University Research Ethics Board approved this study (protocol #26024).

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Rutherford, K., Hiseler, L. & O’Hagan, F. Help! I Need Somebody: Help-Seeking Among Workers with Self-Reported Work-Related Mental Disorders. J Occup Rehabil 34, 197–215 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-023-10123-5

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