News : The 37th edition of the French mental health information weeks runs from 5 to 18 October 2026, on the theme “For our mental health, let us open up to the arts”. Held under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, it sets out to promote mental health, destigmatise psychological conditions and bring people together; the theme draws on a 2019 World Health Organization report built on more than 3,000 studies. A visual, collective medium used to open up the conversation: that is exactly the logic of the workshop I describe here (Collectif national des SISM, press release, April 2026).
This article is for HR managers, learning and development leads and site directors looking for a place to start on mental health. I run this awareness workshop in companies: what follows is what happens in the room, what gets said, what has no place there, and what I observe in teams afterwards.
A workshop to talk about mental health at work is a collaborative awareness session run in a small group: participants themselves connect how work is organised, risk factors, warning signs and sources of help. The aim is not to turn anyone into a specialist, but to make the subject sayable inside a company.
What a workshop to talk about mental health at work actually is
In France, this family of collaborative workshops goes by the name fresque, literally a fresco: a group builds a picture together. The principle is always the same, whatever the subject: nobody lectures, the group constructs. Participants handle cards, connect them, justify the links they place, and the content settles through the discussion instead of coming down from a slide deck.
Applied to this subject, the format produces a session where a group reconstructs the links between what plays out in the work itself, what that does to people, the signs that should draw attention, and the resources someone can be pointed towards. That is what I offer as a workshop for talking about mental health at work. I run it under licence: the content and the teaching method belong to a structured programme, and I do not improvise my cards.
What I observe, session after session, is that the mechanism does most of the work. Ask colleagues to talk about mental health cold and nobody starts. Ask them to place a card and explain why it goes there rather than somewhere else, and everyone speaks; twenty minutes later, nobody is talking about cards any more.
How a session unfolds
Setting the frame
I set the frame before handing out anything. Three rules: what is said in the room stays in the room; the conversation is about the work and what people observe, not about anyone’s health; nobody is required to talk about themselves. That third rule is, paradoxically, the one that makes people talk the most, because it takes the pressure off. I also say plainly that I am an HR professional and a trainer, not a clinician, and that the workshop makes no diagnosis.
The collective work around the material
The group receives a set of cards and has to order them: what happens in the work, what that produces, what becomes visible, and where to turn. Disagreements are the raw material. When two people do not put the same card in the same place, they explain themselves, and it is inside that explanation that lived experience arrives. My role is to prompt, to correct the common confusions between stress, burnout and depression, and not to hand over the answer too early.
What strikes me most when I run this workshop is the moment the group stops turning towards me and starts talking to each other. As long as participants are waiting for me to validate their cards, they stay in a classroom posture; the moment they address one another, they are talking about their own work.
The debrief
Each sub-group presents its picture, and the common ground appears: the same factors, the same blind spots. I always close on the resources: who does what internally, the occupational health service, the 3114 line, the official directory of registered psychologists under the French Mon soutien psy scheme (in French), and the public information published by Sante publique France (in French). A workshop that stopped at the diagnosis, without opening onto where to turn, would be a failed workshop.
What gets said, and what does not
What gets said: concrete work situations, difficult periods already lived through, colleagues people worried about without knowing what to do. It happens that someone puts into words, out loud, something they had never said in that setting.
What does not get said, and what I redirect: named individual situations, ongoing conflicts with an identifiable person, and anything belonging to the field of care. When someone comes to me at the break about a personal situation, and that happens often, I do not deal with it inside the workshop. I listen, and I signpost.
Where my role stops. I am an HR professional, a trainer and the facilitator of this workshop; I am neither a doctor nor a psychologist. An awareness session never replaces professional advice. For an individual situation, the right routes are the occupational physician, the treating doctor or a psychologist. In case of immediate danger in France, call 15. Faced with psychological distress or suicide risk, 3114, the French national suicide prevention line, is free and open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Two versions: one for everyone, one for managers
There are two versions of this workshop, and the distinction is not commercial: it answers two needs that do not overlap. An employee discovering the subject needs to understand it and to feel allowed to talk about it. A manager will find themselves in the position of receiving what someone says.
The question that comes up most often when I work with managers is “am I allowed to ask someone how they are doing?”. It says everything about the discomfort: the fear of being intrusive, and the fear of not knowing what to do with the answer. That is precisely what the managers’ version works on.
| Version | Audience | Objective | What people take away |
|---|---|---|---|
| General | All employees, every role and every level | Lay a common base: what the subject covers, which factors play a part, which signs matter, who to turn to | Shared vocabulary, less awkwardness in naming things, concrete knowledge of where to turn |
| Managers | Frontline managers, senior staff, team leaders, directors | Work on the posture: what to do when a team member is struggling, and how far a manager’s role extends | Markers for opening the conversation without standing in for a health professional, and a clear boundary between listening, signposting and deciding |
What it changes in a team afterwards
The real effect of this workshop is less the information passed on than the speech it makes possible: the content exists elsewhere, but the moment the subject stops being taboo in one specific group does not.
The need is documented. In its press release of 9 June 2026 on absence, Malakoff Humanis notes that half of the employees concerned do not dare raise the subject at work, at a time when mental health is presented there as the leading cause of long-term sick leave. The obstacle is not only ignorance: it is silence.
What I see coming back in the following weeks:
- A shared vocabulary. People stop calling everything that goes wrong “burnout”, and stop saying “he is fragile” when they mean “he is struggling”.
- Identified points of contact. The occupational health service, or the existing listening line, stop being lines on an intranet page.
- Managers who dare ask the question, because they know what to do with the answer.
- Conversations that would not have happened. In the smaller industrial companies where I work, it regularly happens that two people talk, at the next break, about something that has been left hanging for a long time. Nothing spectacular, and yet that is the effect being sought.
One honest reservation: that effect fades if nothing follows. An isolated workshop, in a place where speaking up leads nowhere, produces disappointment, and disappointment costs more than doing nothing.
What this workshop is not
I prefer to say it before proposing it: misunderstandings on this point do lasting damage to a team’s trust.
- It is not a therapy group. Nobody works on themselves there, and I have neither the training nor the mandate for that.
- It is not a psychosocial risk assessment. A workshop measures nothing, samples nothing, and does not fill in your single risk assessment document; a psychosocial risk prevention process follows an entirely different logic, as the French Ministry of Labour (in French) describes it.
- It is not a substitute for prevention. If workload, deadlines or the management style are the cause, the workshop will make them visible; it will not correct them.
- It is not a moment of care. Nobody is treated there. People learn who to turn to, and nothing more.
It is an entry point, often the first one that can be laid down where the subject has never been opened. The employer’s duty of care, set out in article L. 4121-1 of the French Labour Code (in French), explicitly covers workers’ mental health: awareness raising is part of it, and does not exhaust it. What I write here is a general marker; on a specific case, have it validated by an employment lawyer or by your occupational health service.
The context points the same way: the French occupational health plan 2026-2030 (in French), presented on 5 June 2026, holds among its five priorities the promotion of mental health, a national cause for 2025-2026, and the prevention of psychosocial risks.
The logical next step: mental health first aid training
When a company comes out of an awareness workshop and asks “what now?”, the most solid answer is to train a few people in depth. That is the purpose of mental health first aid training, which runs over two days.
The scheme is anything but confidential: according to Egora, reporting on 24 April 2026 on a statement by PSSM France, the threshold of 300,000 first aiders trained in France has been crossed, ahead of the target set for 2027.
What I observe when a company runs both in sequence is that the volunteers for the training come first from the group that did the workshop. Awareness raising does not convince everyone, and that is not its job: it reveals the people who want to go further.
One point never to leave vague: a mental health first aider signposts, and does not treat. They make no diagnosis, prescribe nothing, and follow nobody. The sequence I recommend: the workshop for everyone, first aid training for a volunteer core, and internal communication that says who those people are and what they can do.
What this article does not cover
- The teaching content card by card: it belongs to the licensed programme and is discovered in the room.
- The employer’s legal obligations on psychosocial risks and the single risk assessment document: on your own situation, take specialist advice.
- What to do when facing an individual situation: the right routes are the occupational physician, the treating doctor or a psychologist, not a blog article.
- A quantified impact measurement of the workshop: I have no robust data to put forward, and I prefer to write that down.
- An organisational diagnosis: if your issue is workload or management, awareness raising is not the right first building block.
FAQ
Do participants need prior knowledge?
None at all. The workshop is designed for people who have never approached the subject, and the collaborative mechanism means that those who know the least speak as much as anyone else. No preparation and no prior reading are required. The only useful thing is to come with the understanding that the conversation will be about work, not about anyone’s private life.
Does this workshop replace a psychosocial risk prevention process?
No, and that has to be said before booking a session. An awareness workshop acts on how people see the subject and on their ability to talk about it. It does not assess risks, does not change how work is organised, and does not fill in the single risk assessment document. It sits well alongside a prevention process, but never replaces it.
Can managers and non-managers be mixed in the same group?
For the general version, yes, provided the participants’ own direct line management is not over-represented. For the managers’ version, I recommend staying among peers: questions of posture, how far to ask and what to do with what you receive, are worked through more freely without the teams in the room.
What happens if a participant talks about their own situation?
It happens, and the frame set at the start of the session exists precisely for that. I do not put the person at the centre of the group and I do not handle their situation inside the workshop. I take in what is said, bring it back to a general point, then make contact again at the break to signpost the right person: occupational physician, treating doctor or psychologist.
How is it different from mental health first aid training?
It is a difference of format and of ambition. The workshop is a short collective awareness session that opens the subject for everyone. The first aid course runs over two days and trains first aiders able to spot signs, make contact and signpost, without ever treating or diagnosing. One opens the door, the other builds a lasting skill.
If you are considering this workshop in your company
The right starting question is not “how many people to bring into the room”, but “what will exist the next day for those who have spoken”. If you want to look at what makes sense in your organisation, write to me: I will tell you honestly whether the workshop is the right first building block, or whether it would be better to start somewhere else.
Sources
- Collectif national des SISM, press release, April 2026, French mental health information weeks 2026. Read the release
- Malakoff Humanis, press release, Paris, 9 June 2026, Absence study 2026. Read the release
- Egora, 24 April 2026, “La barre des 300 000 secouristes en sante mentale formes en France franchie”. Read the article
- INRS, “Lancement du Plan sante au travail 2026-2030”, plan presented on 5 June 2026. Read the news item
- French Labour Code, article L. 4121-1, Legifrance, accessed 2 September 2026. Read the article
- French Ministry of Labour and Solidarity, “Risques psychosociaux”, accessed 2 September 2026. Read the page
- French health insurance, Mon soutien psy, official directory of registered psychologists, accessed 2 September 2026. monsoutienpsy.ameli.fr
- Sante publique France, “Sante mentale” dossier, accessed 2 September 2026. Read the dossier
