"Reports about Practical Projects" are written by doctoral students who have designed and carried out a practical project in cooperation with a non-university organization. The BGHS has been supporting these projects with scholarships since 2020. In the third part of the series, Aziz Mensah reports on his workshop that he conducted in cooperation with Swedish Organisation for Global Health (SOGH) on work-life conflict and mental health consequences among working men and women.

Negative mental health outcomes of work-life conflicts such as depression, anxiety, stress and burnout has been a major concern for many organisations, employees, and policy makers in Europe. This situation has even increased since the global spread of covid-19 pandemic in the middle of March 2020, when governments through its actors and agencies directed employees to work from home in order to stop the spread of the virus. The directive that came with the pandemic has further blurred the already thin boundary of work and family life. Working parents have to adjust working from their homes, while they also perform household activities and care responsibilities at the same time, leading to higher levels of negative mental health outcomes. Reports from the OECD in 2018 indicated that about 84 million people in Europe suffer from negative mental health outcomes. At the same time Women experience higher levels of mental health outcomes as compared to men largely because of work-life conflict, lack of social interaction, and effective national policies and social protections. Even with the conscious effort by the UN to promote gender equality and good mental wellbeing and health among member states as part of the sustainable development goals, women still suffer from gender inequality in mental health.

Abbildung 1: Gender Equity Victoria, 2020

In order to create more awareness on this topical issue, I collaborated with Swedish Organisation for Global Health (SOGH) to organise a workshop. SOGH is a non-government organisation that focuses on creating awareness on neglected health topics across the globe. They also work together with local partners to bring positive change in health and environment. Their vision is to have a world free of health inequalities. Moreover, it is the mission of SOGH to create a positive change in people’s health, by educating people on global and public health topics in other to improve quality of health and accessibility of health. Thus, the purpose of the workshop was to share knowledge, skills, cause, and technique of reducing work-life conflict and negative mental health of workers. The workshop further allowed workers from different professions, environment, countries, nationality, and education to come together to discuss the complexity of work-life conflict and also find different solutions to the mental health problems that exist among workers.

The workshop lasted for 1 hour and was structured into 3 sections – presentation section, question section, and solution section. The presentation covered published papers on gender inequality in mental health, cross-country difference in mental health, gender difference in work-life conflict in Europe, and impact of covid-19 in Europe. At the question section, participants were given the opportunity to ask questions about the presentation and any other questions relating to the subject. Most of the questions that were asked covered how mental health was measured, and why does gender differences in mental health still exist in Europe. Other interesting questions also touched on the role of managers, supervisors, and families in reducing mental health. In regards to the solution section, I elaborated on the role that governments, organisations, and policy makers must play in reducing work-life conflict and negative mental health issues during the pandemic and post-pandemic. After, I focused on the individual approach of solving the problem by inviting an expert from SOGH to conduct a 10 minutes practical meditation online as part of the individual’s effort to reduce negative mental health and promote positive well-being.

Click here for the Swedish Organisation for Global Health (Link).

Further information about the “Non-University Careers” project can be found on the BGHS website: (Link).