Strategies for implementing occupational eMental health interventions: A scoping review

Background: Implementing eMental health interventions, especially in the workplace, is a complex process. Learning from existing implementation strategies is therefore imperative to ensuring improvements in the adoption, development and scalability of occupational eMental health (OeMH) interventions. However, the implementation strategies used for these interventions are often undocumented or inadequately reported and have not been systematically gathered across implementations in a way that can serve as a much-needed guide for researchers.
Objectives: The objective of this scoping review was to identify implementation strategies relevant to the uptake of OeMH interventions that target employees and detail associated barriers and facilitation measures.

Methods: A scoping review was conducted. The descriptive synthesis was guided by the RE-AIM (reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation and maintenance) framework and the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research.

Results: A total of 31 from 32,916 publications reporting on the use of Web, smartphone, telephone and email based OeMH interventions were included. Ninety-eight implementation strategies, 114 barriers and 131 facilitators were identified. A synthesis of barriers and facilitators produced 19 facilitation measures that provide initial recommendations for improving the implementation of OeMH interventions.

Conclusions: This scoping review represents one of the first steps in a research agenda aiming to improve the implementation of OeMH interventions by more systematically selecting, shaping, evaluating and reporting implementation strategies. There is a dire need for improved reporting of implementation strategies and for combining common implementation frameworks with more technology-centric implementation frameworks to fully capture the complexities of eHealth implementation. Future research should focus on investigating a wider range of common implementation outcomes for OeMH interventions that also focus on a wider set of common mental health problems in the workplace. This scoping review’s findings can be critically leveraged by discerning decision makers to improve the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation and maintenance of OeMH interventions.