Supporting your mental wellbeing

This short video aims to provide you with some guidance and techniques to support positive mental health and resilience, and also to highlight some signs that yourself or a colleague may be experiencing poor mental health.

Please use this video for yourself, and also with your teams, to encourage discussions around mental health, signposting for information and to understand how we can help and support each other.

In-house counselling and listening services

We offer free, short-term one-to-one Counselling, Psychotherapy, EMDR (Trauma) and CBT therapy to staff at the UHSussex NHS Trust. Self-refer to our staff mental health support services and view our self-help guides and worksheets.

Stress management

There is a strong association between staff experiencing stress and the quality and outcomes of patient care.

There is no specific legislation on stress. However, as with any other hazard, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to assess the risk of stress-related ill health arising from work activities, and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 requires employers to take measures to control that risk, so far as is reasonably practical.

Through this policy, the Trust aims to:

• Increase levels of awareness within the organisation about the causes and effects of stress, the actions that can help to reduce workplace stress, and the role of line managers, teams and the workplace environment in counteracting stress.
• Help managers and staff/teams to identify the possible causes of workplace stress through effective assessment tools.
• Provide information and training to help staff identify and manage stress in themselves and others, and encourage staff/teams to seek help and support as a positive step.
• Ensure effective support to staff who are absent for reasons of stress, enabling as early a return to work and full functioning as possible through appropriate management support and supportive team and workplace environment.
• Provide pathways for teams who have concerns about levels of stress.

UHSussex Stress Management Questionnaire

There are three ways staff/teams can use the Stress Self-Assessment:

• Individually, as part of (or to inform) a discussion with line manager
• Individually, for own use (i.e. doesn’t have to be shared with line manager)
• Team members complete the assessment individually, results are then aggregated for a team-level discussion

For staff who can’t access the intranet (e.g. currently off sick / no access to work laptop / not formally employed by the Trust) the link to the tool on SHE can be emailed. Please contact Simon Atkinson for details [email protected].

The questionnaire must only be completed on the Evotix (Assure) Portal in order for the responses to be anonymised. If you have accessed this by logging in to Evotix, please log out of the system and go to the Evotix (Assure) Portal link below.

This is a self-assessment form for all staff to complete. Please answer openly and honestly.

Other resources

• Mental wellbeing support for staff
• Financial wellbeing support for staff
• Physical wellbeing support for staff
• Leaders Toolkit for Managers