Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Mental health disorders (MHD) are a major cause of human suffering, lost productivity, workplace disability, and economic loss throughout the industrialized world. One of the major factors contributing to mental health (MH) is the environment that the individual lives in, which can precipitate the onset or reoccurrence of a MHD. One of the environments that much of the population interacts with is the workplace. Although the workplace aims to contribute positively to one's MH, there are significant gaps being experienced by people suffering from MHD. Lack of work accommodation and stigma in the workplace increases the effects of MHD. The workplace offers an ideal location for interventions in order to create a psychologically healthy work environment. Traditionally, mental health training (MHT) has been recommended to create a psychologically healthy workspace as it has been shown to to improve recognition of MHD, change peoples beliefs regarding treatment to be more similar to those of health professionals (accommodation), and decrease social distance from people with MHD (stigma). However,there has been very little research on whether or not this type of training could be a positive workplace intervention.The two objectives of this project that will be to identify if there is an association between a) MHT and supervisors willingness to make workplace accommodations for workers with MHD b) MHT and supervisor's beliefs and attitudes (stigma) toward workers with MHD? By identifying the influence MHT has on supervisor accommodation and stigma, it could serve as a potential intervention that could reduce employee stress, resulting in less presenteeism/absenteeism, care costs, insurance claims, and an increase in overall productivity.