Evaluation of the effectiveness of mental health intervention on self-compassion and stigmatisation attitudes among leaders and their followers

Frequent alterations, unpredictable workloads, and blurred lines between professional and personal life all contribute to adverse effects on mental health. As a result, there is a growing need for managers to be attuned to their employees’ emotional well-being and to cultivate the ability to openly, safely, and confidentially address mental health matters. Training in mental health awareness can equip managers with the skills to recognize early signs of common mental health conditions, engage in conversations about mental health, and actively promote well-being to prevent mental health challenges. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of mental health intervention on self-compassion and stigmatisation attitudes among leaders and their followers. The present study is a part of a large European research project. A pre-post research design was implemented in two Czech SMEs to investigate the effect of mental health awareness training on leaders and their followers. The research focuses on two dependent variables – self-compassion as a personal resource and stigmatisation as the attitude towards mental health. The moderating role of learning transfer and the opportunity to use the training was taken into account. For the leaders, the results indicate a statistically significant increase in self-compassion and a decrease in stigmatising attitudes toward mental health issues. There is no statistically significant moderating role of training transfer variables. For the followers, a statistically significant change was evident in decreased stigmatising attitudes. The results need to be interpreted in the context of organisational changes that both companies went through during the research project resulting in more stress, workload, and drop-outs. Implications for the Central European audience: There is a need for knowledge on how to prevent well-being-related problems in a changing world with more remote work and more mental health issues. The present study adds to this need by exploring the effect of mental health awareness training on two organisational levels – leaders and their followers. The practical contribution of this research is to provide specific recommendations on how to stimulate mental health awareness for leaders through training interventions and thus promote employee well-being.