Find recommendations to address mental health well-being, by promoting change and proactive strategies.
National level
Do
Do: Implement prevention and proactive strategies.
02 Step two
This section aims to support and encourage leaders at the NDAs, national and regulatory levels to advocate for increased awareness and support change, by promoting and advocating for the implementation of the following strategies.
01 Implement multiple sessions of programmes in the dental curriculum that contain relaxation techniques or information about stress management.
- The stress management programmes develop strategies to reduce the number of stressors or enhance stress coping skills, using relaxation techniques such as deep breathing and yoga.
- Stress management programmes focusing on stress prevention attempted to decrease the impact of stressors through stress awareness lectures, such as reducing fear of failure and workload pressure
02 Regional training programmes for dental workplaces with an identified mental health wellness lead in their teams.
- Training program for team leads to improve the perception of mental health wellness in the workplace
- Introduce a mental health first aid training
- Design a workplace action plan
- Join local peer support networks
- Complete an annual training to maintain and improve skills
- Training programme on stress awareness for members of the dental team.
03 Publish and promote resources and services available to dentists and dental teams across national and international levels
- Free online tackling-stress courses aimed to help identify the triggers of work-related stress by answering questions such as how dentists can spot the signs and how they can overcome them
- Well-being support for dental teams that provide a guide outlining how to assess their own mental health and well-being and providing resources for self-care, including the organizations available to support them.
- Dentists’ Health Support Programmes that provide dentists with free advice and support on health, alcohol, drugs and other issues.
04 Encourage studies to identify contemporary influences on the health and well-being of dentists and dental teams at the national and regional levels, drawing on their lived experiences.
- Identifying positive and negative influences
- Identifying cultural differences
- Identifying macro-, meso-, and micro-level contemporary factors
The following guide can help NDAs develop mental health programmes to support dental professionals.
