Managing employees’ depression from the employees’, co-workers’ and employers’ perspectives. An integrative review

Abstract

Purpose: To synthesize evidence on factors promoting or hindering work participation (WP) of employees with depression from the employees’, co-workers’ and employers’ perspectives, as well as an additional focus on the influence of the employee’s occupation.

Methods: An integrative review was conducted. Pre-defined eligibility criteria guided study selection. Articles were critically appraised using tools developed by Joanna Briggs and Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Findings were analysed and synthesised using qualitative inductive content analysis.

Results: Seventeen studies were included: 12 quantitative studies, three qualitative studies and two mixed methods studies. From these, 144 findings were extracted and combined into six categories from which two syntheses were developed. One synthesis demonstrated that employees, co-workers and employers hold different perspectives on rehabilitation stakeholders’ responsibilities hindering WP. The other synthesis revealed that WP is influenced by interactions between individual and occupational factors.

Conclusions: Sufficient treatment from health professionals promotes WP. Employees’ fear of stigmatization hinders WP. Co-workers and employers find that open communication is important, however, employers are concerned about entering employees’ private sphere. When managing employees with depression, employers intervene at the individual level. There is a need for structural interventions to promote WP among employees with depression.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• The responsibilities of rehabilitation stakeholders should be clarified to promote collaboration.

• Structural workplace interventions should be initiated to supplement individual level interventions.

• Workplace interventions may focus on more open communication and awareness towards mental illness.

• Interactions between the occupational factors and individual factors should be carefully considered.

Keywords:

• Systematic review
• vocational rehabilitation
• work participation
• return to work
• mental disorder
• depressive disorder

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Helene Sognstrup, AU Library Health, Psychiatry, for providing guidance regarding the systematic search strategy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Public Health at Aarhus University; the Jascha Foundation; and the Oticon Foundation.