MOOCS Saúde Mental - 17 - O papel da organização do trabalho no sofrimento mental

Hello, my name is Natália Maria de Souza Pozzato and I am a psychologist. I currently work at the Special Center for Occupational Health Surveillance of the State Health Department and I also work professionally in clinical practice. Here we start our last module of the Mental Health and Work course, and from now on we will go a little deeper into the specific theme of mental health issues, psychological suffering at work, risk factors, strategies for the promotion, prevention, care, and intervention in mental health.

Well then, let's start with a question for you. Thinking about your work and your reality, what does having mental health at work mean to you? Ready?

According to the World Health Organization, mental health is a state of well-being in which individuals are able to use their skills, recover from routine stress, be productive, and contribute to their community. Mental health implies much more than the absence of mental illness. Well, we've seen so far that work occupies a very central place in people's lives and that's why it's considered a determinant of health.

For us to start and understand this relationship between mental health at work a little better, we are going to talk about three concepts; three basic notions; which are, work context, work organization, and working conditions. In the work context, we talk about multiple, broad, objective, and subjective variables, which define the performance of a concrete task and the environment where this task is carried out. Is this a little vague?

Let's think about some of these factors that we consider work context. First, is work organization; we will talk a lot about this concept later. Basically, we consider tasks, the way they are organized, how the work is done, the hours, shifts, and hierarchical relationships, as work organization.

We'll come back to this concept because it will be very important for us. Second is the environment; the location and the environment in which this work is carried out. Third is the task itself; there are tasks that may incur more or less risk.

And lastly, the tools and materials used in that type of work. By work context, we refer to something very broad, which speaks both of the environment where that work is carried out and the way this work is organized. We have brought a cartoon that exemplifies what a work environment could be like.

We are often in a noisy work environment, as we see here in the cartoon, with infiltrations and other issues. So, we are talking about a work context in which the work environment has problems, it is inadequate. Can you identify if there is any relationship between the work context and the factors that we saw just now and illness and mental suffering?

Can you identify any relationship between this work context and the mental health issues that appear at work? Well, now we come to this other concept, which is work organization. This is a very important concept.

We will see it being repeated a lot throughout the next classes in module four, so we would like you to keep this concept in mind. What is work organization? Basically, the organization of work refers to how tasks and activities are divided among workers.

The hours, rhythms, and duration of time in which these tasks are carried out. The compensation for the work, such as salaries. And the hierarchical structures.

We can see, for example, how the pandemic changed the work organization of many health professionals, where breaks, shifts, and rhythms, for example, were greatly affected. We could no longer take that proper break at the proper time. Many workers had an overload of work because, due to the removal of other colleagues, we had an important change in the organization of work due to the pandemic.

Why do we draw attention to this concept of work organization? Because the organization of work is identified as the main dimension of work related to mental suffering and the process of mental illness. If we talk about mental health at work, we will necessarily need to talk about work organization; hours, breaks, salary, and hierarchical relationships.

We will revisit this concept, and these issues of work organization, throughout this module. We’ve brought another cartoon, which is in a complementary text available at the very end of the module, about attention to the psychological suffering of male and female workers. Here we see the boss congratulating the worker with the highest achievement rates.

But what is the cost of this achievement for the worker? Being subjected to a very competitive work organization with high production and achievement goals, so this cartoon represents this very well. Now that we understand what work context and work organization are, we will understand the relationship between work context and mental health a little better.

To further consolidate these concepts that we have already seen, I would like to show you an image, that may be well-known to many of you, which is a table that exemplifies groups of occupational risks. This table is divided into physical, chemical, and biological hazards, also known as environmental hazards. We have the ergonomic risks in yellow and the risks of accidents in blue.

Since we brought up the issues of work-organization relations, what are we talking about? Where can we locate the factors that are more linked to work organization? Notice that they are highlighted in the ergonomic risks group, but they are not limited to the risks listed here.

Work organization risk issues are not limited to the ergonomic risks that we have mentioned and highlighted here. This is just to make it easier for you to visualize. But there are important examples here of risks that are present in work organization, such as the requirement of inadequate posture, rigid control of productivity, and the imposition of excessive rhythms.

Note that we are referring to issues of how work is organized When we talk about work environment conditions, we will be able to locate them especially in these green groups of physical, chemical, and biological risks, and in some risks of accidents at work. When we have a noisy, dirty work environment subjected to dust, viruses, bacteria, protozoa, etc. , we are talking about work environment issues and no longer about how the work is organized.

Why have we brought up these risk factors? Why have we brought up these occupational risks at this time? If we stop to think a little about mental health, isn’t mental health also influenced by the risks that are present in the work environment, such as excessive noise, heat, cold, dust, or toxic gases?

We understand that this can indeed have an impact on the worker's mental health, but as we have already said, work organization issues have a considerable impact on the worker's mental health. We brought this table of risks to show how the process of mental health and illness is multifactorial. It is determined by a series of factors that are not limited to those we have mentioned here, but we will talk more about these factors later to understand how mental health issues overlap work and workers in different ways.

And emphasizing once again that the issue of work organization has a privileged place in the issues of mental suffering. Before we go on and delve a little deeper into the risks present at work and the relationship they have with mental health, we will need to better understand how work can be a source of illness, suffering, and pleasure, which is what we will see in our next video. Thank you and until the next class.