THE LESS VISIBLE DRIVERS OF SEAFARER MENTAL WELLBEING Published: 9 June 2026 Updated: 11 June 2026 FROM TRADITIONAL TO MODERN MENTAL WELLBEING Discussions around seafarer mental wellbeing have traditionally focused on familiar and often highly visible challenges like long working hours, fatigue, isolation and extended time away from home. While these factors remain important and deserve continued attention, Britannia’s loss prevention team’s recent experience and interaction with seafarers has increasingly suggested that they no longer tell the full story of what seafarers are facing on board today. During a recent webinar hosted by Britannia P&I Club with Dr. Joanna Eugenia Bakouni on ‘ Unlocking the Drivers of Seafarer Mental Wellbeing’ , a more complex picture emerged, showing that mental wellbeing is now increasingly shaped less by workload alone but by less visible pressures, including fear of blame or reprisal, bullying or harassment, job insecurity, culture gap, hierarchy, identity and the degree to which people feel safe to speak up when something is wrong. Despite established fatigue management and rest hour compliance we often see incidents, near misses and behavioural issues persist on board. This raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: Why do seafarers’ mental wellbeing concerns persist even when the obvious stressors appear to be managed ? Of note, feedback shared during the webinar suggested that mental stress is increasingly driven by lack of psychological safety around reporting concerns. These factors are harder to measure than rest hours, but their cumulative impact can be more damaging and far more enduring. WHAT OUR WEBINAR TELLS US ABOUT SPEAKING UP One of the strongest trends to emerge was the persistent reluctance of seafarers to speak up, not because they lack competence or awareness, but because it feels pointless or not safe to do so. The live polling exercise explored the main obstacles to reporting on board. What the participa