Frontline workers are at increased risk of a range of mental health problems, including, but not limited to, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety. There is increasing evidence that organisations can play a vital role in modifying the level of risk faced by emergency service and other frontline workers. A mentally healthy frontline organisation will implement a range of interventions aimed at preventing mental health problems from occurring, enabling early identification if problems do occur, and facilitating early treatment and a full recovery. While most frontline organisations spend time and money on mental health interventions aimed at these objectives, very often the interventions used are not aligned to best practice or the latest research evidence. There are many reasons for this, but one key factor is the difficulty of keeping up to date with the latest research and understanding how this maps on to an organisation’s own practices.

In this presentation I will firstly describe a series of key studies that have been conducted in frontline organisations over the last three years as part of the Front of Mind research program. These controlled studies have answered key questions regarding what types of resilience training may be helpful in frontline workers, whether workplace mental health screening has a role, what types of manager training can be effective and the role of early interventions for PTSD symptoms. Taken as a collective, these linked studies represent the most comprehensive evaluation of workplace mental health interventions for frontline workers ever conducted. I will demonstrate how these results have been used to develop an evidence-based framework, which any frontline organisation can use to assess how their current practices compare and where there are gaps that may require new interventions.