Trends in effectiveness of organizational eHealth interventions in addressing employee mental health: systematic review and meta-analysis
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background:
Mental health conditions are considered the leading cause of disability, sickness absence, and long-term work incapacity. eHealth interventions provide employees with access to psychological assistance. There has been widespread implementation and provision of eHealth interventions in the workplace as an inexpensive and anonymous way of addressing common mental disorders.
Objective:
This updated review aimed to synthesize the literature on the efficacy of eHealth interventions for anxiety, depression, and stress outcomes in employee samples in organizational settings and evaluate whether their effectiveness has improved over time.
Methods:
Systematic searches of relevant articles published from 2004 to July 2020 of eHealth intervention trials (app- or web-based) focusing on the mental health of employees were conducted. The quality and bias of all studies were assessed. We extracted means and SDs from publications by comparing the differences in effect sizes (Hedge g) in standardized mental health outcomes. We meta-analyzed these data using a random-effects model.
Results:
We identified a tripling of the body of evidence, with 75 trials available for meta-analysis from a combined sample of 14,747 articles. eHealth interventions showed small positive effects for anxiety (Hedges g=0.26, 95% CI 0.13-0.39; P<.001), depression (Hedges g=0.26, 95% CI 0.19-0.34; P<.001), and stress (Hedges g=0.25, 95% CI 0.17-0.34; P<.001) in employees’ after intervention, with similar effects seen at the medium-term follow-up. However, there was evidence of no increase in the effectiveness of these interventions over the past decade.
Conclusions:
This review and meta-analysis confirmed that eHealth interventions have a small positive impact on reducing mental health symptoms in employees. Disappointingly, we found no evidence that, despite the advances in technology and the enormous resources in time, research, and finance devoted to this area for over a decade, better interventions are being produced. Hopefully, these small effect sizes do not represent optimum outcomes in organizational settings.
Mental health conditions are considered the leading cause of disability, sickness absence, and long-term work incapacity. eHealth interventions provide employees with access to psychological assistance. There has been widespread implementation and provision of eHealth interventions in the workplace as an inexpensive and anonymous way of addressing common mental disorders.
Objective:
This updated review aimed to synthesize the literature on the efficacy of eHealth interventions for anxiety, depression, and stress outcomes in employee samples in organizational settings and evaluate whether their effectiveness has improved over time.
Methods:
Systematic searches of relevant articles published from 2004 to July 2020 of eHealth intervention trials (app- or web-based) focusing on the mental health of employees were conducted. The quality and bias of all studies were assessed. We extracted means and SDs from publications by comparing the differences in effect sizes (Hedge g) in standardized mental health outcomes. We meta-analyzed these data using a random-effects model.
Results:
We identified a tripling of the body of evidence, with 75 trials available for meta-analysis from a combined sample of 14,747 articles. eHealth interventions showed small positive effects for anxiety (Hedges g=0.26, 95% CI 0.13-0.39; P<.001), depression (Hedges g=0.26, 95% CI 0.19-0.34; P<.001), and stress (Hedges g=0.25, 95% CI 0.17-0.34; P<.001) in employees’ after intervention, with similar effects seen at the medium-term follow-up. However, there was evidence of no increase in the effectiveness of these interventions over the past decade.
Conclusions:
This review and meta-analysis confirmed that eHealth interventions have a small positive impact on reducing mental health symptoms in employees. Disappointingly, we found no evidence that, despite the advances in technology and the enormous resources in time, research, and finance devoted to this area for over a decade, better interventions are being produced. Hopefully, these small effect sizes do not represent optimum outcomes in organizational settings.
Date Issued
2022-09-27
Date Acceptance
2022-07-29
Citation
Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2022, 24 (9)
ISSN
1439-4456
Publisher
JMIR Publications
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Medical Internet Research
Volume
24
Issue
9
Copyright Statement
©Elizabeth Stratton, Amit Lampit, Isabella Choi, Hanna Malmberg Gavelin, Melissa Aji, Jennifer Taylor, Rafael A Calvo, Samuel B Harvey, Nick Glozier. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 27.09.2022. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000965973500001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=a2bf6146997ec60c407a63945d4e92bb
Subjects
COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY
DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS
DISORDERS
EFFICACY
eHealth
employee
Health Care Sciences & Services
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Medical Informatics
mental health
mobile phone
RANDOMIZED-CONTROLLED-TRIAL
Science & Technology
SLEEP
STRESS-MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
systematic review
WEB-BASED APPROACH
WORK
WORKPLACE
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
Canada
Article Number
e37776
Date Publish Online
2022-09-27