This reflective essay discusses work-related mental health in the current context, pointing to the persistence of ideas denying the nexus between work and mental health, and criticizing their simplistic and blaming logic. It goes on by resuming the fundamental concepts in the field of Occupational Health and the contributions of the Latin American social medicine health-disease approach. Then it highlights the relevance and contemporaneity of the concept of mental wearing down. It concludes by outlining health professionals' challenges to understand the relationship between health and work, and the new horizons opened by Brazilian Social Security legislation with the introduction of Technical Epidemiological Nexus (NTEP) and Accident Prevention Factor (FAP).
mental health; work; social psychology; healthcare personnel