Mental Health Awareness Month 2026: Shaping Safer Workplaces

This Mental Health Awareness Month, BCNU is asking members to use new findings about psychosocial hazards to start conversations about psychological health and safety in their workplaces. The findings come from more than 1,300 psychological health self-check charts that members completed during last year’s Mental Health Awareness Month, providing insight into the psychosocial hazards that contribute to psychological harm.

The action is two-fold: members are encouraged to review the findings and bring relevant concerns forward to their worksite joint occupational health and safety (JOHS) committee rep, or regional OHS or mental health reps. Then, JOHS committee reps are encouraged in turn to bring one or two relevant psychosocial hazards forward for discussion at an upcoming committee meeting and help identify opportunities for workplace-level prevention and action.

This year’s focus on action builds on last year’s effort to better recognize workplace psychosocial hazards. The latest findings reveal how members’ safety concerns are emerging across individual health authorities.

Throughout October, BCNU will share the provincial and health authority-level findings from that feedback to provide a closer look at the workplace concerns nurses identified and help inform conversations about prevention and action.

What members are saying:

The three most commonly identified psychosocial hazards are:

• Staffing and workload pressures, including short staffing, insufficient nurse-to-patient ratios and high work demands
• Verbal violence
• Physical workspace pressures, including hallway beds and overcrowding

Members also identify other concerns, including public and patient access to staff areas, high noise and overstimulation, lack of safety equipment, compromised indoor air quality, and isolation or working alone.

Visit bcnu.org to access Mental Health Awareness Month psychological health and safety resources and view the provincial and health authority findings.