Perspectives of mental health in the workplace: anatomy of an academic debate

Abstract

Mental health education in the workplace has a leading role nowadays and responds to a health and socio-economic development problem. The increase in the prevalence of mental problems and disorders in workers with the concomitant economic burden persists. However, in the academies, there is a lack of consensus in its conception, derived from a plurality of competing epistemological perspectives from which it is approached. The objective of this article is to describe the main epistemological perspectives that support the conceptions of occupational mental health presented in articles and documents published between 1987 and 2017. The literature search included the consultation of regional databases taking into account terms (descriptors in Health Sciences), manual consultation, and specialized literature of international health and economic organizations. In the analysis, the findings were gathered by thematic coincidence, leading to three categories: mental health at work and the state of affairs; the centrality of occupational mental health for development, and the lack of consensus. The theoretical analysis was approached in the light of two great traditions that the philosophy of science distinguishes: the explanatory and the comprehensive. It is concluded that a perspective of dialectical pluralism has sufficient potential to approach to the complexity of the phenomenon of occupational mental health, both from the academy and from the actions undertaken by agents in favor of improving occupational mental health.