Supporting employers and their employees with Mental hEalth problems to remain eNgaged and producTive at wORk (MENTOR): A feasibility randomised controlled trial protocol.

Employees with mental health problems often struggle to remain in employment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these employees face multiple additional stressors, which are likely to worsen their mental health and work productivity. Currently, it is unclear how to best support employees with mental health problems (and their managers) to improve wellbeing and productivity. We aim to develop a new intervention (MENTOR) that will jointly involve employees, managers, and a new professional (mental health employment liaison worker, MHELW), to help employees who are still at work with a mental health condition and currently receiving professional support for their mental health. A feasibility pilot study will then be undertaken to examine the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention from the perspective of employees and line managers. The study involves a feasibility randomised controlled study comparing outcomes of participants randomised to receive the intervention (MENTOR) with wait-list controls. Participants allocated to the waitlist control group will receive the intervention after three months. We aim to randomise 56 employee-manager pairs recruited from multiple organisations in the Midlands region of England. An intervention including 10 sessions for employees and managers (3 individual sessions and 4 joint sessions) will be delivered over 12 weeks by trained MHELWs. Primary outcomes include measures of feasibility and acceptability of the intervention and work productivity. Secondary outcomes include mental health outcomes. Qualitative interviews will be undertaken with a purposively selected sub-sample of employees and line managers at three-month post-intervention assessment. To our knowledge, this will be the first trial with a joint employee-manager intervention delivered by MHELWs. Anticipated challenges are dual-level consent (employees and managers), participants' attrition, and recruitment strategies. If the intervention and trial processes are shown to be feasible and acceptable, the outcomes from this study will inform future randomised controlled trials. Trial registration: This trial is pre-registered with the ISRCTN registry, registration number: ISRCTN79256498. Protocol version: 3.0_March_2023. https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN79256498.

Impact of a subsidized spay neuter clinic on impoundments and euthanasia in a community shelter and on service and complaint calls to animal control.

Reducing the number of homeless, nonhuman animals entering and being euthanatized in community shelters is the principal motivation for most spay/neuter (S/N) programs in the United States. This study evaluated the impact of a subsidized S/N clinic opened in 2005 in Transylvania County, North Carolina, on the numbers of impoundments (and euthanasia) of dogs and cats and on the number of animal-related service and complaint calls at the community's only animal shelter. Before opening the local S/N clinic, a significant linear decline in the shelter's dog-intake rate per 1,000 human population was evident. This decline did not accelerate after the S/N clinic opened in 2005. The rate of decline in euthanasia did level off after the clinic opened, but the proportion of impounded dogs euthanatized did not change significantly. The median number of cats impounded and euthanatized yearly in the Transylvania County Animal Services shelter decreased significantly after the S/N clinic opened; the proportion of cats euthanatized did not change. The median annual number of service calls and complaints decreased or leveled off. Unfortunately, data regarding many factors essential for conclusively interpreting these results were not available.