On June 20, Jetty Zijlstra-van der Weide successfully defended her Professional Master Thesis Educational Studies (MEd). That is quite a while ago, but the decision to announce this defense was made at the end of July, and I thought that the theme of the thesis was way too important to publish this summary during the holiday month of August.
The theme of the thesis is mental power (resilience) of young professionals in mental health care. This theme is important because mental power, resilience and vitality are issues many professionals face during their lifetime, also within the mental healthcare system itself. The key message of this thesis project is that mental resilience or health can be developed. Statistics underline the severity of the problem: professionals with an age up to 35 years are those who most frequently suffer mental illness, 25% of them have burn-out symptoms, are overrepresented in statistics on absenteeism due to illness (especially in the education and care sector), so the young working generation is perceived as a vulnerable group.
The project was conducted within the Dimence Group, which is a large organization for mental healthcare, welfare and social services in the Eastern part of Netherlands. It offers preventive high-quality specialized mental health care, social work, societal services and forensic care. The Group consists of 7 foundations for outpatient and clinical care, with around 2,800 co-workers and 1,200 volunteers. The total number of clients the Group is working consists of approximately 50,000 persons. A strategic goal of the organization is to create conditions for a vital and proud population of co-workers.
The current and desired situation was analyzed and described, which resulted in a list of issues that needed to be addressed: mental resilience, psychological safety, the growth mindset, a positive learning culture, room for experimentation, the learning organization, continuous learning and improvement, and connecting with the young generations.
As a next step, development assessments were conducted to raise self-awareness of the personality, motives, intelligence, talents and behavior of the target group, and the MTQ-plus (Mental Toughness Questionnaire Plus) was administered. The model on which the questionnaire is based consists of four dimensions: control, commitment, challenge & confidence, eight fields and 68 items on mental resilience.
Three solution alternatives were considered: 1. Coaching; 2. Community of Practice (CoP); 3. Microlearning. These alternatives were reviewed based on a series of assessment criteria, and based on that the second alternative, CoP, was chosen as a method to create a development trajectory for young professionals in the organization on Mental Power.
The CoP has conducted several activities: composing an attractive group of young professionals who wanted to engage in the development trajectory, handling the development assessments with the MTQ-plus, doing in-depth interviews, designing the program, developing four modules, and facilitating reflection sessions. Module 1 is about ‘Who are you, where are you standing, what do you want?’. Module 2 is about ‘Recognizing and insight in yourself’. Module 3 consists of the theme ‘The mental power plan’. Module 4 is about Reflection. After this, coach meetings were held to finalize the tailor made development trajectory of the CoP Mental Power.
For the measurement of the results various activities were performed: 1. HR-data were used; 2. A 0-measurement and 1-measurement was carried out with the MTQ-plus; 3. An in-depth interview was conducted; 4. Input was gathered during the training; 5. An oral evaluation was conducted; 6. A written evaluation was conducted; 7. Coach meetings were organized; 8. Experiences of trainers were collected.
Given the fact that the issues regarding mental resilience are tough, and the learning trajectory is piloted only on small scale, expectations regarding the effects of the learning trajectory should not be expected as being very high. A modest improvement may already point at a promising result. Whereas the learning trajectory did not influence HR-data (such as on absenteeism), many results were seen. First of all the insight in one’s own mental power, based on the MTQ-plus assessment which resulted in leverage, the development of a mental power plan, raising fo awareness, reflection and practice. Second, learning in the CoP has led to experiences like this trajectory is about me and us, it is hands-on, it is cooperative within the working day-to-day working context, with a strong emphasis on co-creation and eradicating the taboo around mental health issues.
To be specific about the learning results for the young professionals who participated: they reported more awareness raising and insight in patterns, perceiving oneself milder, have concrete goals and tools in terms of the personal Mental Power Plan, anticipating pitfalls, employing forces, clarifying personal balance, marking borders, practicing other behavior, learning to look what is present (and not only the opposite), power of the difference, more related, and cooperative learning.
The approach followed in this thesis may indeed be seen as a quite promising road to address an important issue within the current labour force.
Congratulations Jetty, and thanks Dr. Martijn van Schaik for assessing this Master thesis.
