There are many advocates of the importance of a mental health and wellbeing in workplaces. But few of them address the worst-case scenario for workplace mental health of work-related suicides. In some cases, the mental health advocates are overly cautious about even speaking the reality, which does not help reduce mental health stigma. In 2016 …
The Herald-Sun newspaper has released the final report into the mental health and suicide rate of Victorian metropolitan firefighters. The report, authored by Dr Peter Cotton, found that the issues uncovered in the review of firefighters in the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) are not dissimilar from the findings of other inquiries into emergency service organisations …
On October 7 2016, Victoria’s trade union movement held a Young Worker Conference. The major public statement from that conference was the launch of a survey report called Young Workers Health and Safety Snapshot. The report has received some mainstream press which is not unusual for this type of trade union member survey. Almost twenty …
In October 2016 the Centre for Sustainable HRM and Wellbeing at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) will be welcoming Professor Wayne Hochwarter. Although, according to ACU, he is a “leading international authority on organisational behaviour research, his name was new to me. ACU advised that Professor Hochwarter has experience in the following areas: Employee entitlement …
Australian workplace mental health advocates often seem to shy away from discussions of suicide, perhaps because suicides are not a regular occurrence at work or because work-related suicide remains stigmatised. To better understand this overlap between suicide and mental health, and the working environment, it may be useful to look at the Japanese experience where work-related … Continue reading “Japanese depression contrasts the Western understanding of workplace mental health”
Australian law firm Minter Ellison has produced a useful article (not yet available on their website) on a recent workplace bullying prosecution. However the document displays a perspective that is becoming increasingly common in Australia labour law practices....
On March 30 2016, the Andrew Victorian Government released the final report of the Royal Commission into Family Violence. Family violence, otherwise known as domestic violence, is not strictly an occupational health and safety (OHS) but the mental health effects can flow into the workplace and, some argue, fails to deter family violence. The final …