Labour Market Problems And Mental Health

This report aims to identify the knowledge gaps and begin to narrow them by reviewing evidence on the main challenges and barriers to better integrating people with mental illness in the world of work.

This report on Denmark looks at how the broader education, health, social and labour market policy challenges are being tackled.

Tackling mental health problems of the working-age population is a key issue for labour market and social policies in OECD countries, not just for health systems. Governments increasingly recognise that policy has a major role to play in keeping people with mental health conditions ...

This report on Norway looks at how the broader education, health, social and labour market policy challenges are being tackled.

A series of reviews of mental health and work policies in selected OECD countries revealed the challenge of mental health for social and labour market outcomes and policies and the high costs of the continued stigmatisation of mental health for individuals, employers and societies. To better respond to this challenge, in early 2016 health and employment ministers from the 38 OECD countries endorsed a Recommendation of the Council on Integrated Mental Health, Skills, and Work Policy.

Tackling mental ill-health of the working-age population is becoming a key issue for labour market and social policies in OECD countries. OECD governments increasingly recognise that policy has a major role to play in keeping people with mental ill-health in employment or bringing those outside of the labour market back to it, and in preventing mental illness. This report on Switzerland is the fifth in a series of reports looking at how the broader education, health, social and labour market policy challenges identified in Sick on the Job? Myths and Realities about Mental Health and Work (OECD, 2012) are being tackled in a number of OECD countries. It concludes that the Swiss system is well resourced to address the challenges in various policy fields; that due the involvemnet of a large number of stakeholders much needed policy coordination across different sectors is a difficult task; and that a stronger mental health focus is required in Switzerland's health, social and labour market policies.

The background for the international research conference “Health Hazards and Challenges in the New Working Life” was the emerging questions concerning the health and social effects of the rapid changes in the labour market leading to increasing long-term unemployment, temporary employment and irregular employment contracts. We knew that other countries have had this development at the labour market for a much longer time than Sweden has and it seemed a good idea to invite interested researchers and practitioners to an international seminar to share the relevant research findings and discuss future research needs. Thus, the first international, interdisciplinary research conference on “Health Hazards and Challenges in the New Working Life” was arranged in Stockholm during the last year of the 2nd millennium but was directed towards the foreseen development during the next millennium. We were very pleased that more than 200 participants came to a cold and dark country just after New Year’s Eve, and that it was a truly multidisciplinary setting. It became very obvious that it is necessary for the occupational health and safety research community to reach out to the public health research community as well as to the social and political sciences in order to understand the determinants and to perform comprehensive analyses at several levels in this new labour market situation.