Propuesta de Protocolo para la implementación de 'Mentes en Obra': Una Intervención en Salud Mental para Trabajadores de la Construcción

The construction industry has been recognized for its important contribution to national and global economies in terms of employment generation. However, it still leads the world as one of the sectors with the highest number of worker fatalities and work-related injuries. Some 90% of construction workers are men, are unskilled and are characterized by a low level of education, job instability, high work demands, accumulated fatigue, a high prevalence of overweight and obesity, irregular sleep patterns, problematic consumption of alcoholic beverages, smoking and a very high exposure to chemical, physical, biological, and social hazards. The above mentioned, justifies the importance of the following intervention protocol that seeks to have an important impact on the mental health of workers, for this it was imperative to perform a detailed analysis between the association of occupational risk factors and related mental illnesses. Among men, knowledge of mental health is poor, many accept to live passively through their suffering rather than seek help, which is why creative and innovative interventions are needed to overcome existing cultural barriers. The present protocol seeks to propose a group mental health intervention aimed at construction workers in Bogota, Colombia. This is why we proposed multiple group interventions, based on the evidence of reducing the perception of stress, depression and increasing the likelihood of resorting to support tools. To measure the impact of our intervention we will use the sad persons scale and the Stress Perception Scale 14, pre and post intervention. A literature review was performed using Mesh terms and a search algorithm. Subsequently, from the articles resulting from the advanced search, those that allowed characterizing the population and identifying the most prevalent risk behaviors were selected by title and content. Likewise, those that provided clarity on group interventions in the field of mental health were selected. Finally, with the selected articles, a snowball strategy was used to complement additional information of relevance to the research, and thus establish a protocol that favors mental health, with the purpose of evaluating the impact of the intervention by means of the Sad persons scale and the stress perception scale 14.