RESUMEN
ISSUE ADDRESSED: This article presents a framework to identify hidden psychosocial hazards and emerging mental health risks in the workplace, thereby assisting Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking. The framework adds value to the processes outlined in SafeWork NSW's Code of Practice for Managing Psychosocial Hazards At Work. Specifically, the article documents a framework to analyse microcultures and back stage sites of enactment where psychosocial hazards and risks may be hidden or obscured in workplace settings. BACKGROUND: The article's framework aims to bring to the surface both the intra and interpersonal tensions employees experience in the social reality they inhabit while they perform their work, thereby positively contributing to organisations and PCBUs by helping them create healthy workplace cultures and psychological safety. METHODS: Specifically, the article discusses partnering with an organisational ethnographer when a PCBU embarks upon psychosocial investigations to: gain access, select employee participants, start conversations, establish rapport, build trust, collect and analyse data. CONCLUSION: This article theoretically contributes to health promotion literatures by offering organisations a complementary way of extracting deeper insights and understandings of psychosocial hazards and emerging mental health risks which are not apparent with traditional methods of inquiry.
RESUMEN
ISSUE ADDRESSED: Three years have passed since the Australian Government's Department of Health released its National Men's Health Strategy 2020-2030. Presently, little evidence is available to show whether the strategy has achieved success in rectifying men's mental-ill health, particularly the experience of stigma when expressing vulnerable emotions such as grief. Concurrently, research within the field of psychology continues to show that men experience significant pressure to conform faithfully to their socialised gender role. Given the focus to better men's mental health in Australia, this study ascertained people's perceptions of men experiencing grief. METHODS: The study adopted social constructionism to explore how participants perceived a fictious character living with grief using a hypothetical vignette by way of convenience sampling. Nine males and seven females who resided in Australia participated in answering seven questions concerning the character's experience of grief. RESULTS: Inductive thematic analysis yielded three themes which collectively represented perceptions of masculinised grief. Notably, avoid stigma by fixing grief, avoid stigma by quickly getting over grief, and avoid stigma by suppressing the expression of grief. SO WHAT?: The study suggests that a stronger research focus should be targeted towards rectifying stigma resulting from men's expression of vulnerable emotions by incorporating in depth interviews in order to create worthwhile public awareness initiatives. Such initiatives should seek to minimise societal pressures that are placed upon men to ensure conformity to dominant masculine ideologies and their socialised gendered role when experiencing and expressing vulnerable emotions such as grief.
RESUMEN
ISSUE ADDRESSED: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted organised cruise holidays as perfect incubators for microbiological infections due to the constant socialising within closed spaces. Little is known about people's health behaviours and perceptions during cruise holidays. METHODS: Narrative group interviews and respondent photo diary exercises were conducted with families (n = 25) residing in different areas across metropolitan NSW, Australia. Guided by a social practice theoretical approach we undertook a thematic analysis that identifies reasons for choosing a cruise, health considerations and behaviours in relation to cruise travel and awareness of official cruise health information. RESULTS: Cruise travel included a licence to abandon cautious behaviours, reinforced by confidence in the cruise organiser's risk management ability. Health concerns were not a high priority for participants and were mainly understood in terms of eating healthy, modest exercise, managing seasickness and having adequate supplies of medications. Awareness of official cruise health and risk information was largely non-existent. CONCLUSION: Understanding how travel health practices emerge and are likely to be modifiable produces health-promoting awareness and intervention efforts that recognise and link with people's ideas about cruise holidays as times of fun, leisure, relaxation, without interfering with or imposing on them. SO WHAT?: This study highlights the importance of developing health communication and promotion strategies that are responsive to the interconnected meanings, competencies and materials that have a bearing on how cruise travellers understand and enact health-related behaviours in preparation for and during a cruise holiday.