Promoting Mental Health at Work Among Hospital Professionals

Mental health is a state of well-being in which a person can realize his/her potential, cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and contribute to his/her community. It refers to a continuum that extends from the promotion of well-being and the prevention of mental disorders to the treatment and rehabilitation of people suffering from these disorders. Healthcare professionals face major mental health challenges, due to the demands of their profession, which is characterized by heavy workloads and confrontation with human distress. The frequency of mental health problems among hospital staff is high, at all stages (malaise, distress, pathologies). A meta-analysis found that caregivers suffer from around 30% anxiety, 30% depression, 30% psychotrauma and 45% sleep disorders. According to the French Labor Code, employers are responsible for the physical and mental health of their employees. The Hospices Civils de Lyon establishment project includes a section on the prevention of psycho-social risks, quality of working life and management. Healthcare professionals, like the general population, have high expectations of non-medication treatments. These non-medication interventions aim to prevent, treat, or cure a health problem. They are non-invasive and non-pharmacological, with certain observable impacts supported by scientific evidence. Mindfulness meditation is one of the most extensively studied non-medication interventions in mental health. Declined in different modalities, its effects focus on improving resilience with efficacy on physical and mental well-being (stress, anxiety, burnout, affect), and their physiological corollary (cardiac and respiratory rhythms), acceptance of reality in stressful situations, reduced interpersonal conflict in emergencies and, more broadly, impact on relational behaviours (anti- and pro-social), teamwork. Managers also benefit, with a strengthening of the aspiration to lead, in a vision fully at the disposal of others. Mindfulness meditation appears to be a practice that promotes mental well-being and could contribute to fulfilment at work. The challenge is to offer a mindfulness meditation program in a hospital department for individual and collective benefit. The main objective is to evaluate the evolution of psychological fulfilment in the workplace of hospital healthcare professionals in a 5-month meditation program between the baseline and the end of the program, in comparison with the evolution over the same period of a control group. The expected outcome is to show that it is possible to implement a mindfulness meditation intervention for hospital staff in care departments, whatever their status or profession, with individual and collective benefits for mental health, psycho-social risks (stress, violence, etc.) and work organization. If it proves to be effective and acceptable, this intervention could be offered more widely within the institution and beyond.