Mental Health, Wellness, and Resilience for Transit System Workers (2024)

PART II

Resources and Toolkit

Part II of this report includes resources and a toolkit to help practitioners and transit agency staff address the challenges, needs, and other barriers to wellness among frontline transit workers. The next chapter in Part II, Chapter 5, presents a series of case studies that highlight exemplary programs implemented by transit agencies in the United States to address various aspects of worker mental health, wellness, and resiliency. Chapter 6 provides transit agencies with guidance and tools to enhance mental health and wellness programs and processes. This toolkit uses lessons learned from literature, interviews with agencies, and focus groups with transit workers and agency leadership throughout the United States.

This resource for practitioners was developed through extensive engagement with transit management officials, union leadership, and frontline workers. Content was informed by research gathered through a literature review, survey, interviews, an initial focus group of frontline workers, and two additional focus group sessions with agency officials and frontline workers to discuss potential elements of the report’s toolkit. Participants discussed topics such as

• Preferred programs to support mental health and wellness among transit workers;
• Training, mentoring, or peer programs that could provide important support for transit workers and operators;
• Privacy concerns and difficulties with accessing existing mental health or wellness programs;
• Difficulties with implementing mental health and wellness programs; and
• Potential toolkit formats and content suggestions.

This part is not meant to be read as a narrative from start to end but rather used as a reference for transit agency leadership, frontline workers and supervisors, and union leadership to address the most pressing issues workers are facing. Readers are encouraged to identify issues they are hoping to address and use the case studies and tools to develop interventions to address those issues. (For detailed instructions on how to identify potential solutions, see Chapter 5.)