Seafarer wellbeing & mental health awareness
Support, awareness and trusted routes to help
Life at sea can involve fatigue, isolation, disrupted sleep, workload pressure, family worries, conflict and long periods away from normal support networks. This hub provides maritime-specific awareness and signposting only. It does not diagnose, treat, assess mental fitness for duty or replace professional medical care.
Immediate danger or a mental-health emergency
Treat a mental-health emergency as seriously as a physical one. If someone appears at immediate risk of harming themselves or another person, cannot stay safe, or needs urgent assessment, use the vessel/company emergency and medical procedures immediately. Alert the Master, responsible officer or onboard medical lead as appropriate, seek telemedical/professional advice and contact the relevant local emergency service when available. Do not rely on MusterDeck for emergency response.
Get independent support now
ISWAN SeafarerHelp — worldwide
Free, confidential and multilingual support for seafarers and their families, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. ISWAN states that calls are answered by trained human helpline officers, not an AI chatbot.
MNWB Seafarer Support — UK
A free confidential referral and signposting service for serving and former UK seafarers and their families. The current service lists telephone support Monday to Friday, 09:00–17:00 UK time.
External services are independent of MusterDeck. Their availability, eligibility and contact details can change; use the linked official service page for the latest information.
Mental-health awareness
Changes such as marked withdrawal, persistent difficulty sleeping, unusual irritability, trouble concentrating, a significant drop in functioning, expressions of hopelessness or talking about self-harm can be reasons to check in and encourage support. These signs can have many causes and are not a diagnosis.
- Choose a private, calm moment where practical.
- Ask how the person is doing and listen without judgement.
- Do not try to diagnose them or promise that you can fix the problem.
- Encourage appropriate professional, company or independent welfare support.
- If safety may be at immediate risk, use the emergency route above.
Fatigue, stress and sleep
IMO fatigue guidance recognises work, sleep opportunity and quality, ship motion/noise, personal worries and other factors as contributors to fatigue. Companies should have processes allowing seafarers to report inadequate sleep or risk of fatigue-related error without fear of reprisal.
- Use applicable hours-of-rest and fatigue-management procedures.
- Raise safety-critical fatigue rather than simply pushing through it.
- Consider workload, watch patterns, environment and recovery opportunity together.
- Seek medical/professional advice where symptoms are persistent or concerning.
Social connection and isolation
ISWAN’s Social Interaction Matters research links quality social interaction with morale, resilience, inclusion and healthier onboard culture. Fatigue, long hours and operational pressures can reduce those opportunities.
- Support voluntary and inclusive social activities rather than forced participation.
- Protect meaningful rest time and healthy boundaries between work and recreation.
- Enable family contact and useful connectivity where operationally possible.
- Review recreation spaces and activities against what the crew actually value.
Bullying, harassment and respect at sea
Violence, harassment, sexual harassment, bullying and sexual assault are serious safety, welfare and employment issues. From 1 January 2026 the STCW PSSR competence framework includes prevention and response to violence and harassment.
- Use the company/vessel reporting and safeguarding process.
- Do not retaliate against a person for raising a concern.
- Preserve confidentiality on a genuine need-to-know basis.
- Seek independent welfare or professional support if company reporting does not meet the person’s support needs.
This awareness content is not a substitute for mandatory PSSR training, a formal investigation, legal advice or applicable flag-State/company procedures.
For Masters, officers and shore management
Culture
Make it acceptable to raise fatigue, welfare and personal-support concerns without ridicule or retaliation.
Leadership
Senior officers set the tone: respectful behaviour, visible support and fair workload management matter.
Privacy
Do not seek a diagnosis or collect more health information than the organisation genuinely needs.
Signposting
Know the company EAP/medical route, telemedical route, SeafarerHelp and relevant port welfare options.
Prevention
Treat rest, workload, connectivity, shore leave, recreation and social inclusion as system factors.
Escalation
Mental-health emergencies require professional/emergency assessment, not informal software advice.
Privacy-first by design
MusterDeck’s Wellbeing Hub is intentionally designed as awareness and signposting, not employee health monitoring. It does not ask for a mood score, diagnosis, counselling notes, self-harm disclosure or mental-fitness assessment, and it does not create a manager dashboard of individual mental-health status.
Support links are presented as direct external links and are not given feature-specific “help-seeking” analytics events. Normal platform security, availability and technical logging may still apply to use of the service, but the Wellbeing Hub is not designed to infer a person’s health status from their use of the content.
Sources and review status
Content reviewed against the sources below on 29 September 2026. Maritime requirements and welfare services can change, so company procedures, flag-State requirements and the latest official source remain authoritative.
MusterDeck provides general maritime wellbeing awareness and signposting only. It is not a healthcare provider, emergency service, counselling service or substitute for a doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist, occupational-health professional, telemedical service, company medical procedure, flag-State requirement or professional judgement.