COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES OF EMPLOYERS IN IMPLEMENTING

MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAMS AND POLICIES IN WORKPLACE

IN DASMARIÑAS, CAVITE

An Undergraduate Thesis Presented to

the Faculty of Communication Arts Department

College of Liberal Arts and Communication

De La Salle University-Dasmariñas

In partial fulfillment of the Requirements in

COJO008 Communication Research

by

JERICA NICOLE M. CAÑA

COM 22

March 22, 2020

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Introduction

According to the National Statistics Office, mental illness is the third most common form
of disability in the country. The Philippines has the highest number of depressed people in
Southeast Asia. Last June 20, 2018, the Mental Health Act (Republic Act No. 11036) was
signed into a law, and took effect the following month, on July 5. The law aims to enhance the
delivery of mental health services; promote and protect the right of people getting psychosocial
health away the stigma and discrimination against people with mental health diseases services;
and establish policies that would give Filipinos their right to mental health. In the workplace, this
law should be implemented because it will help the employers and the workers to be
comfortable to open up about someone’s mental health issues. Haslam, C, Atkinson, Brown
and Haslam, R.A, (2005) conducted focus groups with employees who had experienced
depression or anxiety as well as employees from human resources and occupational health and
safety. They found that those with personal experiences felt that depression or anxiety were not
recognized as true illnesses and reported a sense of stigma within the workplace. Employer
familiarity with mental illness and related approaches in the workplace is integral to a healthy
workplace for many reasons (Harder, H. G., Wagner, S., & Rash, J. A. 2014). Santiago, D.
(2017) stated that numerous studies have directly pointed to stressful work conditions as a
common originating factor for psychological disorders, and that these disorders inflict substantial
burdens leading to loss of self-esteem and less effective work performance. Not only a person’s
work situation can be left debilitated by a psychological disorder, but even the quality of his or
her life in general.

However, the study that was previously mentioned suffered from some limitations; the
researchers had no background information on severity of mental health problems of
participants. How do Employers construct their messages to introduce Mental Health Policies
and Programs in workplace? How do Employers encourage their Workers to express feelings
and ideas during the occupational therapy? How do Employers adjust on such communication
problems with their Workers who have mental health problems?

In this paper, we will explore the communication strategies that the employers used in
implementing mental health programs and policies in workplace. Furthermore, the researchers
will also determine how are mental health policies and programs are communicated in both
public and private workplaces.
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General Problem Statement:

1. How are Mental Health Policies and Programs communicated in the workplace?

Specific Problem:

1. What information about the mental health policies and programs were shared to the
employees?
2. What communication tools are used to communicate the mental health policies and
programs?
3. How frequent are the mental health policies and programs communicated?

Theoretical Framework:

The tradition that will use for this research is The Socio-Psychological Tradition, it is
defined as communication as interpersonal interaction and influence. This tradition is interested
it how people’s attitudes change. Researchers under this influence seek to focus and analyze
individuals’ behavior, psychological variables, individual effects, personality and traits. It also
asserts that individual and society are interlinked. This means, an individual strives to meet the
needs of the society and the society helps him to attain his goals. In the socio-psychological
tradition the focus is on individual cognition and behavioral characteristics in a communicative
context. For instance, one might be inclined to stop smoking if they saw public service
announcements with graphics details of what smoking does to the lungs.

The communication theory will use in the study is the Constructivism by Delia (1987).
This theory seeks to explain individual differences in people’s ability to communicate skillfully in
social situations. This theory is based on the idea that people’s individual interpretations of the
social realm shape, or construct, their communicative behavior. Furthermore, it also focuses on
the ability of the person to make message which is appropriate to the receiver by means of
observation.

In the framework, the source will start the observation, and after the Observation, the
source will produce the message or will be doing Message production whereas the message will
come from to a recollection of past actions and will become a person centered message or a
tailor message intended to a specific person.
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Figure 1

Constructivism Theory

Source Message
Observation Production
Message

Past
Actions

Method

Study Design

The study’s design is quantitative research and the main objective of the research was
to explore the Communication Strategies of Employers in Implementing Mental Health
Programs and Policies in Workplace in Dasmariñas, Cavite through Survey. Quantitative data
can be as simple as the percent of people responding “Yes” or “No” to a specific question.
However, one of the most valuable uses of quantitative survey data comes from questions that
are scaled (What is Quantitative Survey Data? |NBRI, 2015).

Exploratory research intends merely to explore the research questions and does not intend to
offer final and conclusive solutions to existing problems. This type of research is usually
conducted to study a problem that has not been clearly defined yet (Exploratory Research -
Research-Methodology, 2012).

Respondents