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Priority Action 2: Stigma Reduction

Implement stigma reduction and health promotion approaches over the five-year period, to strengthen the knowledge, skills and behavior of all United Nations staff members with regard to staying psychologically fit and healthy and to ensure that concerns about stigma, anticipated and/or experienced, are not a barrier to achieving good mental health and well-being.

Stigma can be influenced at three levels: organizational, managerial, and individual:

• At an organizational level, issues such as the use of appropriate language, policies to assist those seeking help, and parity in the support of those with physical and mental health diagnosis should be supported.
• At a managerial level, training to recognize and discuss mental health and well-being challenges both in individual and team settings is important. Additionally, managing the processes around return-to-work is a vital role for managers, both with other departments and within their own teams.
• At an individual level, people should know not only where to access mental health and wellness services, but also recognize any internal or external stigma that might be preventing them from seeking help.

Cultural, social, and institutional contexts influence the way staff members experience and perceive stress and mental health issues. This culturally influenced, anticipated and perceived stigma, are common and contribute to fear of acknowledging one¡¯s mental health issue and subsequently seeking mental health care. This delayed, or no-care, outcome is associated with lower self-esteem and compromised engagement in employment. The sooner people get help the better the outcome for them, and for the organization.

Stigma Reduction - flyer   Full list of resources

Priority Actions 3 and 4: A Healthy Workplace (Prevention and Well-being)

Initiate a suite of prevention interventions, informed by best practice and shown to influence positively the protective factors associated with good mental health and well-being, as well as avert or minimize harm from known risk factors, directly and indirectly for the staff member, and/or from the environment in which they work.

Establish a workplace well-being programme, with an agreed charter, practical support, training and recognition awards for teams and managers that enables the achievement of respectful, resilient, psychologically safe and healthy United Nations workplaces over a five-year timescale.

Workplace prevention and well-being interventions differ from most interventions as they are organizationally based, not individually based. While the result will ultimately be measured by improvements for the individual, the delivery methods differ.

To support prevention and well-being in the workplace, organizations need to consider how we work and the environment in which we work- all resulting in the individuals experience of the workplace.

Organizations will be asked to identify the most prevalent workplace risk factors and the most prevalent workforce risk factors. While these two concepts are closely related, they differ in that workplace factors are organizationally driven, while workforce factors are individual behaviors based on the perceived wants, needs or constraints of the workplace.

United Nations personnel report workplace risk factors around 3 main topics: lack of time, lack of resources and lack of control over job/ career. Workforce stressors are often the behavioral results of the primary stressors listed above and can be modified with coping strategies supported by the organization and managers. These stressors include; working outside core hours, feeling obligated to be online/available 24/7 and wanting to improve work life balance.

Workplace and workforce stressors are often closely linked. Improvement in one area can lead to gains in the other and often advancement can be made simultaneously. One way these gains can be made is through educational programs for both managers and staff on the well-being benefits of clear expectations and boundaries in the work/ life harmonization arena. Additional educational areas may include managing stress (work related or otherwise), healthy communication styles, and timely and open conversations career plans and goals.

A Healthy Workplace - flyer   Full list of resources

Priority Action 5: Insurance

Complete a review of United Nations Health Insurance provision, and United Nations social protection schemes (for disability and compensation) within two years, to achieve equity of coverage for mental health, and ensure that provision is adequate, acceptable and appropriate.

Quality health insurance is necessary for organizations and individuals to optimize their psychological health. Adequate networks, acceptable levels of coverage and appropriate delivery mechanisms, empower personnel to seek help when needed. While insurance coverage related to physical illness is well understood, reaching mental health parity can be a challenge. When organizations have inadequate coverage of for mental health care, they effectively discriminate against the people who need that assistance.

This discrimination is unintentional. It is often buried in the fine print of second opinions, session caps, language barriers and out of pocket costs. Couple this with a mental health challenge and the opportunity for a cost-saving early intervention may be lost. This is why it is imperative that the UN System review, simplify, and standardize their health insurance schemes as related to mental health, well-being, and disability.

Based on a review done by the United Nations Health Insurance Working Group and a survey of Employer Health Benefits Survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the following actions have been established for review in your organization's Action Plan.

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Priority Action 6: Quality Control

Create systems to enable and oversee the safety and quality of psychosocial support programmes.

As outlined in the United Nations Staff Stress Counsellor Group (UNSSCG) report ¡°Guidance on Professional Standards for UN Counsellors¡± the United Nations has a commitment to ensuring the quality and ongoing professional development of those who support the psychosocial needs of UN personnel. ¡°Minimum standards for counsellors are vital to ensure the protection of staff and that those employed as counsellors are competent to practice and work to the highest ethical standards.¡±

Due to the variety of cultural competencies needed by the United Nations, not all counsellors are trained in countries with national licensing and/or accreditation boards. As a result, the United Nations Staff/ Stress Counsellors Group has outlined internal standards that will help ensure the quality of providers. The standards can be found discussed in detail via the UNSSCG document ¡°Guidance on Professional Standards for UN Counsellors¡±.

To summarize,

• Licensure/ certification is preferred
• Professional organization membership is accepted under certain circumstances
• An alternate track is required where the abovementioned tracks are not available

In addition to ensuring providers have the competency to practice effectively and ethically, ongoing education is needed to ensure the programmes being implemented meet international standards. As per the UNSSCG Guidelines this requires a minimum of 20 hours of mental health related ongoing education annually. To ensure the maintenance of these standards an ongoing assessment should be included in a pre-existing structure such as annual performance reviews.

Quality Standards - flyer   Full list of resources