Positive interventions for individuals

Strategies for individual mental health

Our understanding about ways people can promote their mental health is growing. Here are some strategies to promote mental health at work, informed by positive and clinical psychology.

Psychological capital training

Psychological capital (PsyCap) refers to a person’s personal psychological resources such as hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism. PsyCap training can generate positive work outcomes, including enhanced wellbeing, increased engagement and job performance, and lower job stress. Emerging evidence also suggests PsyCap can be cultivated within teams for enhanced team performance and team member wellbeing.

Character strengths approaches

Character strengths reflect personal qualities (e.g. perseverance, teamwork, empathy) that influence how a person thinks, feels and behaves. Strength interventions, such as Values in Action (VIA), involves identifying and applying a person’s strengths in their approach to their job and work environment. These approaches can be useful for improving worker wellbeing, as well as leadership outcomes. 

Job crafting

Job crafting involves changing job design to optimise the fit between job requirements and a person’s needs, abilities and strengths. In this way, job crafting can enhance wellbeing, engagement and job performance.

Mindfulness interventions

Mindfulness involves attention to and awareness of the present moment. Research shows mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programs in the workplace reduce people’s experiences of emotional exhaustion (a dimension of burnout), job-related stress, as well as some symptoms of anxiety and depression. MBSR programs can also improve people’s quality of life and wellbeing outcomes in the workplace.

Cognitive behavioural-based interventions

Research shows approaches that incorporate cognitive (e.g. reframing negative thinking and attributions) and behavioural (e.g. goal setting, problem solving, relaxation, assertiveness and communication) skill development are effective at improving subjective wellbeing at work.

Gratitude training

Gratitude in the workplace refers to ‘noticing and appreciating the positives in one’s work life’. Gratitude training involves intentional activities designed to increase people’s awareness of, and engagement with, positive aspects of their work and workplace (e.g. supportive work relationships). Be careful that gratitude training is not used as a method for making people accept unacceptable working conditions.

Additional activities for wellbeing

Here are some foundational actions people can take to look after their wellbeing:

• connect with other people
• keep physically active
• keep learning
• give to others
• stay in the present.

Importantly, these approaches are informed by extensive research. This differentiates them from popular ‘feel good’ or ‘pop psychology’ approaches that are supported by little or no scientific evidence.

The importance of combining organisation and individual approaches

Approaches that focus on strategies for individuals are only one aspect of creating mentally healthy workplaces. Workplace mental health is a shared responsibility across all organisation members (workers and employers) and individual-level approaches cannot replace reducing organisational and job-related stressors at their source.

The most comprehensive approach to workplace mental health is an integrated approach, which simultaneously seeks to protect people from work-related harm, respond and manage mental ill-health as it manifests in the workplace, and promote positive aspects of work. Not adopting an integrated approach or focusing too much on individual-level strategies results in wasted investment, and ad hoc and disconnected initiatives.