Transforming workforce mental health: Evidence-based and systemic approaches to supporting healthcare professionals

Date: Thursday 18 June
Time: 11.55am - 1.10pm

Overview

Healthcare professionals experience disproportionately high rates of mental health difficulties, with psychiatric conditions now the leading cause of sickness absence in the NHS. Yet access to tailored, effective support remains limited. This session addresses a pressing issue in psychiatry by showcasing innovative, evidence-based models that improve mental health care for healthcare workers—drawing on international perspectives, lived experience, and systemic reform.

Chaired by Professor Neil Greenberg, President of the Society of Occupational Medicine and a leading expert in occupational mental health, the panel brings together diverse voices from the UK and continental Europe, representing different genders, professional backgrounds, and institutional affiliations.  

Dr. Ananta Dave, the RCPsych Retention & Wellbeing Lead, will explore systemic contributors to physician suicide, presenting organisational interventions informed by her Churchill Fellowship. Drawing on both professional and lived experience of mental health challenges, she will illustrate the personal and institutional dimensions of clinician wellbeing. Her presentation will link these findings to the NHS Long Term Plan, focusing on three strategic shifts that embed staff wellbeing into sustainable service transformation.

Dr. Dolores Braquehais, Director of the Galatea Integral Care Program in Catalonia, will present findings from one of the longest-running, confidential, publicly funded mental health services for healthcare professionals in Europe. Supporting over 7,000 professionals since 1998, Galatea combines preventive and treatment interventions and offers a replicable model for addressing workforce mental health at scale. 

Dr. Muzaffer Kaser will present health economics evaluation findings from Cambridgeshire’s Staff Mental Health Service (SMHS), which provides rapid access to care for NHS staff. The service demonstrated significantly shorter waiting times, improved clinical outcomes, thousands of pounds productivity gains per healthcare worker. With a marginal cost increase of resource use (£55 per course of treatment), SMHS offers a compelling, equitable, and economically sustainable model for targeted investment in workforce mental health.

This session aims to:


  • Integrate the voices of clinicians with lived experience; and focusing on mental health challenges of the workforce that is a crucial aspect of overall health of populations .
  • Promote the patient and staff voice through qualitative feedback, service-user satisfaction data, and lived narratives.
  • Give practical insights to inform clinical practice, service design, and leadership in workforce mental health—supporting an inclusive, preventive, and compassionate culture within psychiatric services.
  • Explore international models that improve healthcare workers’ mental health and identify what makes these approaches effective, equitable, and sustainable.

Speakers

  • Chair: Dr Peter McAllister, RCPsych Lead for Veterans' Mental Health, London
  • The role of cross-organisational collaboration and strategies for a better mental health in the workforce
    • Dr Ananta Dave, Black County Integrated Care Board, Wolverhampton
  • Galatea Integral Care Program: 25 Years of a specialised mental health service for health professionals
    • Dr Dolores Braqueheis, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
  • Caring for carers: establishing a cost-effective, scalable mental health service for healthcare workers
    • Dr Muzaffer Kaser, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge
Register for Congress 2026

Please email congress@rcpsych.ac.uk or call 020 8618 4120 with any enquiries.