Dissemination

The guidelines are available on the WHO website in English, with the executive summary available in all six United Nations languages. National ministries responsible for mental health and occupational health will be notified of the guidelines through WHO’s regional and country offices. Ministries for labour and employment, and representative bodies for workers and employers, will be notified of the guidelines through the ILO. The guidelines will be shared with a broad network of international partners, including representative organizations for persons responsible for or committed to the health, safety and well-being of workers, as well as WHO collaborating centres, universities, nongovernmental organizations and UN agencies.

Implementation

To facilitate implementation of the recommendations, a policy brief will accompany the guidelines, developed jointly by WHO and ILO. The policy brief will be made available in the six United Nations languages to facilitate wide dissemination and will present policy and implementation options which will be derived from the guidelines. WHO regional and country offices will encourage implementation at country level. The implementation may also be supported locally through the adoption and implementation of the WHO Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan (2013–2030) and the WHO global strategy for health, environment and climate change, both of which have been adopted by the World Health Assembly. Additionally, WHO will disseminate the guidelines and the joint policy brief through a broad network of international partners, including national ministries of health, WHO collaborating centres, key stakeholder groups (which represent the target audience of these guidelines), universities, nongovernmental organizations and United Nations agencies. The ILO will promote the dissemination of the policy brief among its tripartite constituents, including ministries of labour, in addition to employer and worker organizations. This will provide policy guidance on the roles and responsibilities of actors in the world of work in preventing, protecting and promoting, and supporting mental health at work.

Monitoring and evaluation of the uptake and implementation of the guidelines

WHO will seek to monitor uptake and implementation of the guidelines in national policies and programmes by reviewing the number of countries that have adapted or endorsed the guidelines. WHO will use the WHO atlas [17] and other routine approaches (e.g. the WHO MiNDbank database¹) to assess how national policies and service delivery for workers have been adapted to integrate the recommendations. WHO will seek to continue to collect regular feedback from implementation activities and key stakeholders in order to evaluate the usefulness and impact of the guidelines.

Future updating of the guidelines

The guidelines are expected to be valid for a period of five years. The WHO Secretariat, in consultation with technical experts, will continue to follow research development in mental health promotion, prevention and interventions for workers – particularly for questions in which the certainty of evidence was found to be of low or very low certainty. If new evidence emerges or other important considerations arise which may have an impact on the current recommendations, WHO will coordinate an update of the guidelines, following the procedures outlined in the WHO handbook for guideline development, second edition [26].

Footnotes

1

See: https://www​.mindbank.info (accessed 29 May 2022).