Addressing employee mental health needs and fostering organizations that enable thriving has become a priority for most workplace health and well-being initiatives. While mental health issues for the nation were of growing concern before COVID-19, the pandemic amplified concerns about loneliness, burnout and deaths of despair. A recent study that garnered attention from the popular press found that participants of individual-level mental health interventions were no better off than non-participants. This editorial reviews that study, summarizes limitations and beneficial learnings from the research, and argues that organizational factors have been shown to mitigate or amplify the effectiveness of mental health services. Tenets of ‘patient-centered care’ and the principles behind Total Worker Health® will need to be more broadly embraced so that the voice of employees can better inform workplace well-being strategies and strategic plans.
Comment likely attributable to Ebony McGee who offered this thought at the Proceedings from the National Summit on Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being: A Focus on the Graduate Academic Environment. Chung ER, et al. (manuscript in progress) McGee is author of “Reimagining Critical Race Theory in Education: Mental Health, Healing, and the Pathway to Liberatory Praxis” (Educational Theory, 65(5), 491-511).
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