Spain’s Instituto Nacional de Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo (INSST) published a new manual on good practices for promoting mental health at work on 28 October 2026. The document brings together occupational risk prevention, health promotion and early detection of mental health problems in a single approach. Four accompanying guides translate the manual into concrete guidance for different target groups within organisations.
What does the new manual contain?
The main manual, the “Manual de buenas prácticas en la promoción de la salud mental en el trabajo – Año 2026”, is built up from six parts: an introduction, the objectives and scope of the document, the scientific and methodological context, the way the good practices were designed, an overview of practices per target group within an organisation, and a closing summary with conclusions. At its core is a “Marco de prácticas de salud mental en el trabajo”, a framework that lets companies classify and present good practices in the area of mental health. INSST calls this framework the central axis of the manual: all the good practices described are categorised and explained using it. The manual brings together prevention of occupational risks, health promotion and early detection of mental health problems in one integrated approach.
Who are the accompanying guides for?
Alongside the main manual, INSST published four separate guides. One guide is aimed at management and the HR department. A second guide is intended for middle management, the supervisors who work directly with employees. A third guide is written for the prevention service (Servicio de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales, SPRL). The fourth guide describes the scientific and methodological context of the manual. In this way, every role within the organisation gets its own document, alongside the shared framework from the main manual. The main manual and the four guides are available as separate PDF documents via the INSST website.
What does the integrated approach involve?
According to the announcement, the manual combines three strands that are often treated separately in practice: preventing occupational risks, actively promoting health, and detecting mental health problems early. The classification framework is meant to help companies organise their own practices along those lines. The INSST announcement page itself does not mention figures, research findings or concrete recommendations; these can only be found in the accompanying PDF documents, which were not consulted for this article. The set-up, a shared framework supplemented with separate guides for management, supervisors and the prevention service, is not tied to Spanish regulation and could also be a useful reference point for organisations in other countries.
Context
The INSST publication appears during the EU-wide Healthy Workplaces campaign 2026-2028 of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). That campaign was launched under the title “Together for mental health at work” and has improving the mental health of workers in the EU as its central theme.
Source: Manual de buenas prácticas en la promoción de la salud mental en el trabajo – Año 2026 (INSST), 28 October 2026
Additional research: EU-OSHA Healthy Workplaces Campaign 2026-2028: Together for mental health at work
