The European Union predicts that around 15% of people in the Member States will suffer a mental disorder during their lifetime. Faced with this situation, the city council of Barcelona, in collaboration with different social entities, has designed a mental health plan.
In this context, one of the challenges set for the council and social entities is to prevent and care for the mental health of workers in their work environment. Therefore, it has promoted "the City Agreement to take care of mental health at work", in which Suara Cooperativa has joined, as well as twenty other entities and organizations.
"This agreement aims to strengthen the city's commitment to the promotion of measures to help care for mental health in the workplace," is highlighted at the beginning of the document that reflects the essence of this agreement, sealed on October 3 of this year.
One of the pillars of this agreement, which is intended as a living and constantly evolving instrument, is to offer entities and organizations guidelines or resources to care for mental health in the workplace, such as those contained in this publication prepared by the Mental Health Advisory Council of the city council.
For their part, the organizations undertake, among other issues, to improve the working conditions of female workers; promote the training or training of these; promote the employment integration of people with mental disorders; promote the implementation of programs and provide tools to prevent and detect mental disorders in the workplace; combat psychological harassment; as well as promoting coordination between internal occupational risk prevention services and the mental health network.
Conference on how to take care of mental health in the workplace
Recently, the "City Agreement to take care of mental health at work" organized a first conference on the subject, which included two round tables. This activity began with a speech by the Councilor for Health of the Barcelona City Council, Marta Villanueva.
At the first table, different entities or organizations shared their own experiences to ensure the mental health of workers. In this, Àngels Cobo, director of Digital Transformation of Suara Cooperativa, explained the Benestarum project, a virtual platform that aims to offer emotional or psychological support, physical (such as physiotherapy services, personal trainer or meditation), nutritional or financial advice to workers. In addition, it also enables different group sessions to improve their wellbeing.
As a result of the confinement, Suara Cooperativa wanted to respond to the situation that the workers were experiencing and, therefore, offered them virtual psychological and physiotherapeutic treatment. They soon realized the benefits of this initiative. "We decided that we could not close it. There are things we cannot do, but there are many others that we had not imagined," said Cobo during the conference, which took place on Tuesday, November 28, at Barcelona Activa's main headquarters in Poblenou.
Currently, the Benestarum platform is open to other initiatives, organizations or companies that also aim to preserve the mental health, as well as the physical or emotional well-being of workers. So far, the platform has accumulated more than 7,500 people registered and more than 2,600 sessions have been held.
The second round table of the day brought together different experts who provided entities or organizations with different tools and resources on mental health care at work.
