Terveystalo participates in the MielenPolut project of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health

Changes in working life also require new approaches to maintaining work ability. Mental health problems and disorders have been one of the biggest challenges to work ability in recent years, causing high levels of long-term sickness absence and the second highest rate of permanent disability after musculoskeletal disorders. Most worryingly, mental health causes can lead to disability at a young age, sometimes even before the proper start of a career.

Terveystalo has achieved impressive results with brief mental health interventions and has successfully used brief psychotherapy to support individuals' ability to work and shift the focus of mental health-related absences from long to short periods of absence.

The MielenPolut project, a joint project with the Institute of Occupational Health, is exploring the effectiveness of similar evidence-based methods and seeking solutions for preventive mental health work in occupational health. The project will examine mental health care pathways in occupational health care and produce predictive models of work capacity based on these pathways using machine learning methods.

The project has just started and will run for the next 2.5 years. As research results are published, we will also share them with our customers. Our aim is to develop our activities on the basis of this information so that we can tackle mental health related work ability challenges more effectively, says Tuija Turunen, senior psychologist and psychotherapist at Terveystalo.

 

Read more about the project on the Occupational Health Institute's website