Here are some questions from Hillary to start you thinking ahead of Friday's session:

• Can mental wellbeing at work be measured?
• Is the threshold for the regulator to investigate mental health (ie a clinical diagnosis) too high?
• Are we treating harm to mental health differently to physical harm?
• Has the potential for psychological injury become a new focus of risk assessment?

(Note that in these live chat sessions, all posts to this thread go to the moderator for consideration and possible release to the Forum. I'll release some responses to these questions in the hour before we kick off at 10.00am tomorrow just as a warm-up. Not all responses may appear, depending on numbers, repetitiveness etc)

Agree that work design is a valuable focus for improving mental wellbeing.
(So-called resilience training has always rung alarm bells with me - the physical safety analogy is that it's like training workers not to fall from height rather than redesigning work so it doesn't have to be done at height.)
However I'm also aware that for many people working in H&S, dealing with mental wellbeing is a scary prospect outside their experience. (This also applies to WorkSafe and its inspectors).
How to resolve this, so that mental health and wellbeing can be brought within the scope of H&S practice?

OK, it's nearing 10 so time to post your responses to the questions above, and to tell of your experience grappling with the mental health side of things.

To take another tack, how have people found working with their HR colleagues in this area?
So often, it seems, people who report to HR that they have been bullied or sexually harassed end up victims of the HR system too.
HR too often seems to consider its duty to protect the organisation first rather than to protect its employees.
H&S - ideally - has a relentless focus on protecting people.
A clash of cultures?

Whoa! That's like HR hearing of an accident and not telling H&S. Perhaps a way forward would be for HR to always inform H&S of a mental distress report so that HR can deal with the issue on a personal level and H&S can consider if there are any system of work factors involved that could be improved?

OK, time to wrap up this discussion. Hillary - many thanks for making yourself available! And to forum members who chipped in contributions - all good stuff.

I'll contemplate doing another session in a week or two.