Action Learning and Mindfulness for Mental Health in the Workplace

Author(s):  
Ron Passfield
Author(s):  
Niels Buus ◽  
Lisa Lynch ◽  
Henrik Gonge

AbstractThis paper reports from a study of an intervention aimed at strengthening mental health nursing staff supervision. We developed and tested a short-term group-based meta-supervision intervention as a supplement to usual supervision. The intervention drew on action learning principles to activate and inspire supervisees to develop strategies for influencing their own supervision practices. The core ‘meta-supervisory’ process was organized round participants’ reflections on the possible benefits of supervision, their perceived barriers to realizing the benefits, and the articulation of concrete actions to overcome the barriers. In this paper, we introduce previously reported findings from the study and present two novel supplementary analyses of data from the meta-supervision process. First, we analyse a transcript of an audio recording made during the intervention, which illustrates how supervisees generate empowering psychosocial resources through the group processes. Second, we analyse supervisees’ paraphrased accounts of barriers to effective supervision and their accounts of personal projects to overcome the barriers. Barriers ‘outside’ the supervision setting primarily inspired projects aimed at creating structural change, whereas barriers ‘inside’ the supervision setting inspired projects aimed at creating individual change. The meta-supervision intervention was effective in increasing participation in supervision, but it shared the same problems of resistance and reluctance as often observed in supervision in general. In the discussion, we compare our ‘bottom-up’ approach to activating supervisees and implementing supervision practices with ‘top-down’ approaches. The meta-supervision intervention illustrated the importance of engaging supervisees in their own supervision and suggested how it can have both individual and organizational benefits.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Noga ◽  
Alison Foreman ◽  
Elizabeth Walsh ◽  
Jenny Shaw ◽  
Jane Senior

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. A. Ioannidis

AbstractNeurobiology-based interventions for mental diseases and searches for useful biomarkers of treatment response have largely failed. Clinical trials should assess interventions related to environmental and social stressors, with long-term follow-up; social rather than biological endpoints; personalized outcomes; and suitable cluster, adaptive, and n-of-1 designs. Labor, education, financial, and other social/political decisions should be evaluated for their impacts on mental disease.


1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
O. Lawrence ◽  
J.D. Gostin

In the summer of 1979, a group of experts on law, medicine, and ethics assembled in Siracusa, Sicily, under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science, to draft guidelines on the rights of persons with mental illness. Sitting across the table from me was a quiet, proud man of distinctive intelligence, William J. Curran, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Professor Curran was one of the principal drafters of those guidelines. Many years later in 1991, after several subsequent re-drafts by United Nations (U.N.) Rapporteur Erica-Irene Daes, the text was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly as the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This was the kind of remarkable achievement in the field of law and medicine that Professor Curran repeated throughout his distinguished career.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 959-970
Author(s):  
Kelly M. Reavis ◽  
James A. Henry ◽  
Lynn M. Marshall ◽  
Kathleen F. Carlson

Purpose The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between tinnitus and self-reported mental health distress, namely, depression symptoms and perceived anxiety, in adults who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examinations Survey between 2009 and 2012. A secondary aim was to determine if a history of serving in the military modified the associations between tinnitus and mental health distress. Method This was a cross-sectional study design of a national data set that included 5,550 U.S. community-dwelling adults ages 20 years and older, 12.7% of whom were military Veterans. Bivariable and multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate the association between tinnitus and mental health distress. All measures were based on self-report. Tinnitus and perceived anxiety were each assessed using a single question. Depression symptoms were assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire, a validated questionnaire. Multivariable regression models were adjusted for key demographic and health factors, including self-reported hearing ability. Results Prevalence of tinnitus was 15%. Compared to adults without tinnitus, adults with tinnitus had a 1.8-fold increase in depression symptoms and a 1.5-fold increase in perceived anxiety after adjusting for potential confounders. Military Veteran status did not modify these observed associations. Conclusions Findings revealed an association between tinnitus and both depression symptoms and perceived anxiety, independent of potential confounders, among both Veterans and non-Veterans. These results suggest, on a population level, that individuals with tinnitus have a greater burden of perceived mental health distress and may benefit from interdisciplinary health care, self-help, and community-based interventions. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12568475


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