2026
341
Juana Patlán Pérez patlanjuana@hotmail.com
Arturo Juárez García arturojuarezg@hotmail.com
Abstract: This editorial discusses the significance of mental health in the workplace, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the challenges of paid and unpaid care work, the need for valid psychometric tools to assess psychosocial risks, and the effectiveness of psychosocial and cognitive-behavioural interventions. The articles discussed in this issue contribute to improving the mental health, well-being, and quality of life of workers in Mexico.
Keywords: mental health, work, well-being, psychosocial interventions, psychosocial risks.
Resumen: Este editorial propone una reflexión sobre la importancia de la salud mental en el ámbito laboral, especialmente a partir de la pandemia de covid-19. Analiza los retos asociados al trabajo de cuidados, tanto remunerado como no remunerado; la necesidad de contar con instrumentos psicométricos válidos para evaluar los riesgos psicosociales, y la efectividad de las intervenciones psicosociales y cognitivo-conductuales. Los artículos que integran este número contribuyen al fortalecimiento de la salud mental, el bienestar y la calidad de vida de las personas trabajadoras en México.
Palabras clave: salud mental, trabajo, bienestar, intervenciones psicosociales, riesgos psicosociales.
Editorial
Mental health in the workplace
Salud mental en el trabajo
Juana Patlán Pérez patlanjuana@hotmail.com
Arturo Juárez García arturojuarezg@hotmail.com
Recently, mental health, particularly in the workplace, has become increasingly important from both a scientific and social perspective. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been clear that the latest wave of effects of the pandemic relates to economic impacts and effects on the mental health of the population, as well as the presence of psychological trauma, mental illness, and burnout (Kohli & Virani, 2020). The consequences of poor mental health in the workplace are not limited to the economic sphere and workers, but also impact quality of life and social well-being, which includes governments, employers, families, and society.
The World Health Organisation (WHO, 2005) defines mental health as a state of well-being that enables individuals to cope with daily stress, develop their abilities, work effectively, and contribute to society. It is important to emphasise that mental health is not only the absence of mental disorders and illnesses, but also the absence of symptoms of anxiety and depression, among others (Westerhof & Keyes, 2010).
Galderisi et al. (2015) described good mental health as a dynamic state of internal balance that enables individuals to utilise their abilities in harmony with their societal roles. This encompasses social and cognitive skills, the capacity to recognise, express, and regulate both one's own emotions and those of others, flexibility, the ability to cope with adverse events, and the maintenance of harmonious relationships between the body and mind.
Mental health in the workplace is a significant aspect of both health psychology and occupational health psychology. The main objectives of these fields are to protect and improve the health, safety, and well-being of workers (Cunningham & Black, 2021); therefore, it is important for psychology to conduct effective diagnosis, assessments, and interventions. As a result, there is a need for measurement tools, diagnostic and assessment methodologies, and approaches for psychosocial intervention. In this editorial, we present some reflections on the articles in this issue, which represent significant challenges for the future of the field.
Care work is classified as paid work and unpaid work. In the area of paid (care) work, an employment relationship exists between professionals and health institutions. This includes medical staff, nurses, social workers, therapists, and various other occupations primarily within the care, health, and healthcare sectors.
Conversely, unpaid care work involves providing services such as caring for a baby, child, or sick adult who needs attention and care. This group includes caregivers who are not paid for their work. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO, 2019), 76.2% of unpaid care work is provided by women. This situation becomes complex when a worker has a paid job and provides unpaid care work, leading to excessive workload, fatigue, mental exhaustion, and physical and mental health problems.
The work involved in caring for dependent persons due to illness or disability, especially within the family environment, is a stressful task. Therefore, as the article in this issue clearly states, the study of this type of worker is important because the combined workload and care responsibilities (paid and unpaid) are invisible, requiring prevention programmes, public policy, and interventions that contribute to preserving their health, mental health, and well-being.
The diagnosis of mental health from a clinical and organisational perspective considers the measurement of psychosocial risk factors, stress, symptoms or disorders such as anxiety, depression, etc. (Cunningham & Black, 2021). For accurate diagnoses or psychodiagnoses, professionals in PS and PSO require instruments that are valid, reliable, and standardised to ensure the effectiveness of their measurements and assessments. To this end, this issue of the journal Psicología Iberoamericana presents the results of three scales.
Psychosocial Processes at Work Scale (PROPSIT) in Workers with Parental Responsibilities
There are various questionnaires or scales for measuring psychosocial factors at work. At the international level, the following are particularly noteworthy: the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) (Karasek et al., 1998), the Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire (ERI) (Siegrist et al., 2004) and the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ), which was developed in Denmark and currently has a third validated and reliable version (Burr et al., 2019). The COPSOQ is perhaps the most widely used questionnaire in research and assessment within the concept of ‘psychosocial risks at work’ and has been adapted to more than 25 countries (COPSOQ, 2025; Moncada i Lluís et al., 2021).
In Mexico, there are no robust instruments with psychometric properties and theoretical frameworks to support the measurement and evaluation of psychosocial factors at the workplace. The NOM-035 questionnaires for identifying and analysing psychosocial risk factors at work lack theoretical foundations, and neither the methodology used in their construction nor their psychometric properties are clear (Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare [STPS], 2018).
Considering this situation, Dr Arturo Juárez García and colleagues proposed a Conceptual Model of Psychosocial Processes at Work (PROPSIT) with its respective method and questionnaire (Juárez-García & Flores-Jiménez, 2020). This questionnaire is based on a solid theoretical model, characterised by five subsystems divided into three intralabor aspects with three levels of health prevention and promotion: negative (risk) or positive (salutogenic), and two subsystems: individuality or personality factors and extralabor demands. This measurement instrument has been validated in samples of Peruvian and Mexican workers (Merino, 2022; Merino-Soto et al., 2022). In this issue, we propose an additional validation of this questionnaire in a sample of workers with parental responsibilities and conclude that its scores are psychometrically viable. We welcome research that aims to estimate the properties of PROPSIT as presented in this issue, and we urge further studies of this and other scales in the future, which continues to be a social necessity in this area.
The term ‘well-being’ took on greater relevance after the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2005) defined health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. In the literature, the construct of ‘well-being’ is identified at the individual level (subjective, emotional, psychological, social, affective and occupational) and at the national level (welfare state).
Occupational or workplace well-being is important because when people feel good at work, it leads to better job quality (Calvo & González, 2013), increased and improved work performance (Slemp & Vella-Brodrick, 2014), reduced staff turnover, and increased engagement (Parker & Martin, 2009).
The literature identifies multiple instruments for measuring well-being. Notable examples include Ryff's Psychological Well-Being Scale (Ryff & Keyes, 1995) and its many adaptations (Zhou et al., 2025), and Peter Warr's Work-Related Affective Well-Being Scale (Goncalves & Neves, 2011). Among the recently developed scales of work well-being are the Occupational Well-being Scale by Daovisan and Intarakamhang (2024) and the Tripartite Scale of Occupational Well-being (Collie, 2024). This issue of the journal Psicología Iberoamericana makes an important contribution to the validation of the work well-being scale in administrative workers. Similarly, there is a need to adapt more scales that measure work well-being and estimate their psychometric properties.
Questionnaire on Severe Traumatic Events
NOM-035 (STPS, 2018), approved in 2018 in Mexico and aimed at identifying, analysing, and preventing psychosocial risk factors at work, includes a questionnaire to identify workers who have been subjected to severe traumatic events. This questionnaire consists of 20 dichotomous responses that address the three main aspects identified in the DSM-V-TR for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, with trauma considered a triggering factor (Lupesko-Persky & Brown, 2025): a) a severe traumatic event, b) persistent memories of the event, c) efforts to avoid circumstances similar to or associated with the event, and d) effects on the worker. The authors' contribution to this issue is crucial because the psychometric properties of the questionnaire mentioned in NOM-035 not been previously explored. Further research is needed to explore and confirm its factorial structure and internal consistency.
Psychosocial intervention refers to a set of actions designed to reduce, eliminate, and prevent psychosocial risks through the implementation of preventive and control measures among workers, work groups, and the organisation, aimed at achieving health, mental health, well-being, and quality of life at work (Official College of Psychologists, 1998). There are different psychosocial interventions in the literature (Bados, 2008; Meliá, 2007).
Primary interventions aim to reduce risk at its source to prevent and avoid health damage. Secondary interventions seek to identify the effects of psychosocial risks on workers' health and take timely action. Tertiary interventions aim to provide treatment to people who have suffered health damage.
At the individual level, the aim is to promote mental health among workers by designing preventive measures based on personality, attitudes, structural factors, and functional factors. Group interventions aim to develop positive communication and strong interpersonal relationships in the workplace that provide social support and group cohesion, as well as help prevent violence, workplace harassment, and sexual harassment. Organisational interventions are aimed at preventing and addressing factors and risks inherent to the organisation, such as leadership, organisational climate, working hours, etc.
In terms of teleworking, psychosocial interventions aim to ensure that people working in this mode do so safely and healthily, avoiding unsafe and dangerous acts and conditions, and preventing accidents due to exposure to physical, chemical, biological, mechanical, psychosocial, and ergonomic agents (STPS, 2023). In contrast, technostress is recognised as a contemporary form of psychological stress linked to the constant use of and adaptation to digital technologies in the workplace. It manifests as a negative reaction when technological demands surpass an individual's perceived resources or capabilities, leading to fatigue, anxiety, irritability, or cognitive overload, among other symptoms (Salanova et al., 2013). Similar to technostress, it is crucial to implement interventions at the individual, group, and organisational levels, considering primary, secondary, and tertiary strategies. In this context, the authors provide an excellent systematic review of stress interventions found in the literature and the potential areas for improvement.
Behavioural and cognitive-behavioural intervention models aim to prevent, eliminate, or reduce inappropriate behaviours and promote appropriate behaviours by considering the variables that control these behaviours. Cognitive-behavioural therapy is based on the premise that mental disorders arise and are maintained because of cognitive factors. Cognitive-behavioural interventions aim to replace inappropriate or dysfunctional behaviours or thoughts with flexible and adaptive cognitions. In cognitive-behavioural interventions, according to Bados (2008), there must be agreement between the therapist and the client. In addition, a positive relationship based on empathy and trust must prevail, allowing the intervention to be properly developed, and expected changes to be achieved.
The process begins with an initial diagnosis, in which the behaviours to be modified or the effects to be eliminated are measured. The effects of the intervention are evaluated considering different response modalities, such as motor, cognitive, autonomic, and emotional responses. Finally, the results were analysed to identify changes in behaviour and their long-term maintenance.
The design and development of a cognitive-behavioural intervention should begin with a diagnosis to determine the type of intervention required by the patient.
Studies and research that aim to change behaviour based on cognitive-behavioural intervention must start with a diagnosis or initial measurement (pre-test) before implementing the intervention, and at the end of the intervention, there must be a second measurement (post-test) to verify the reduction or elimination of inappropriate behaviour. Only through measurement can the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioural intervention be verified. This issue includes a cognitive-behavioural intervention to reduce burnout, anxiety, and depression in a particularly vulnerable group: professionals who care for victims of violence. This is a valuable contribution to the lack of psychosocial interventions in Mexico.
PS and PSO require foundations and instruments to measure and evaluate variables related to mental health, as well as methodologies to design and implement effective psychosocial interventions. The studies presented in this issue are part of a collective effort by specialists to improve mental health and quality of life at work in Mexico. We hope that readers, whether students, researchers, or professionals interested in these topics, will find valuable information for decision-making in this issue.
redalyc-journal-id: 1339
