Awareness of mental ill health in the workplace has increased significantly, but there is still work to be done, a British Journal of Psychiatry paper has shown.
In 2010, 44.2% of respondents to a survey were aware of employees in their organisation that had mental health problems. This is a jump from only 16.2% in 2006.
One of the papers of a series included in the British Journal of Psychiatry's report - Reducing stigma and discrimination: evaluation of England's Time to Change programme - aimed to document changes between 2006 and 2010 in knowledge, attitudes and responses towards mental health among employers.
Entitled Mental health problems in the workplace, changes in employers' knowledge, attitudes and practices in England 2006-2010, the paper stated: "We expected findings to inform communication with employers about the support they may need to create and maintain a healthy and diverse workplace with respect to mental health."
The paper showed in 2006 a third of employers "erroneously" thought none of their employees would develop a mental health problem during their working life. This compares with just 7% in 2009 and 4% in 2010.
The document added in 2010 the likelihood of reporting to a formal policy on stress and mental health in the workplace was significantly higher than in previous years.
There was also fairly high agreement among survey respondents that employer policy was well understood by managers and employees - 77% and 66% in 2010 respectively - and was effective in helping staff stay in work - 80% overall in 2010.
And 72% said employer policies were effective in helping improve employee mental health.
The report stated: "Recently work stressors have increased as a consequence of economic recession but sickness absence has fallen, suggesting employees fear taking time off and are present at work despite being unwell."
The research also showed an increase to 60.4% in 2010 of those that believed the fallacy stress was a specific disorder regarding ‘mental ill health in the workplace', compared to 45.9% in 2006.
Depression, which is a specific mental health disorder, was the next biggest association with mental ill health in the workplace, with awareness jumping from 21.7% respondents saying so in 2006 to 49.2% in 2010.
