According to the definition proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health is a state of full well-being in which the individual is capable of recovering from everyday stress and is able to perform his/her personal and professional skills. This is because mental health is integral and complementary to the maintenance of organic functions and is as important as physical health.

The concept of mental health is not associated to the absence of mental conditions, but to the ability to manage adversities and conflicts in a positive manner, acknowledging one’s limits and deficiencies. Therefore, a good mental state ensures individuals can widely enjoy their social rights and citizenship, providing more harmonious, safer social interactions.

Mental issues may occur due to the influence of different social, genetic, psychological and environmental factors that are often beyond the reach of those who are suffering. Socioeconomic strain, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, may offer higher risks for mental health, especially regarding people in vulnerable situations.

As a consequence of this new context, adapting to new situations such as remote work, uncertainty regarding the future, and the fear of contagion have resulted in an increase in cases of anxiety, depression, frustration, and powerlessness. During the pandemic, mental issues have become the main cause of leave from work.

In order to reduce these damages within the context of online, remote work, Fiotec has adopted a stance that promotes the maintenance of everyone’s mental health. In addition to lectures regarding mental and physical well-being over the year, the Internal Week of Prevention of Accidents in the Workplace (Sipat), which took place online in September, adopted the theme “Healthy Mind, Healthy Body and Safe Work”, with the goal of addressing psychological issues and how daily habits can have an impact on one’s entire life.

Fiotec also implemented, in a partnership with PlenaVi, a corporate mental health program through which employees can schedule sessions with psychologists online. With a multiprofessional team, the initiative has the goal of treating and preventing mental conditions, especially the most common: anxiety and depression.

According to Plenavi’s CEO, Paluma Caterina, this kind of mental issue causes considerable professional impact. She says that “institutions such as Fiotec invest in their employees’ mental health, as they are the institution’s most precious assets”.

Mental health in the LGBTQIA+ community

Fiocruz is committed to promoting the mental health of the entire population through projects and public initiatives. At this time, the master’s degree “Human Rights, Justice and Health: gender and sexuality”, linked to the Department of Human Rights, Health and Cultural Diversity of the National School of Public Health (Ensp/Ficruz), trains public servers of the city of Rio de Janeiro so they can fight discrimination and violations against the LGBTQIA+ population within the field of primary healthcare, especially mental health.

The project aims to promote knowledge on the particularities of this group by means of debates on human rights and public health, creating skills for the democratic actuation of health workers. This is because in Brazil LGBTQIA+ people are the main targets of violence and excluding

attitudes; with human rights under threat, these violations affect mainly the mental health of this population.