A New Perspective: Mental Health in the Workplace
By Trevor Throness | November 5th
Recently I participated in a workshop on the topic of ‘mental health in the workplace.’
The instructor shared some interesting statistics:
- 50% of Canadian households are affected by mental health issues
- 500,000 Canadians per week stay home from work due to a mental health issue
- The estimated rate of ‘malingering’ (faking) is 15%. So, 85% of these issues are very real. These people aren’t lazy or weak, they’re regular people who are suffering
- Depression/anxiety is the 2nd leading cause of disease in Canada
- 2/3’s of sufferers would not disclose mental health issues to their employer (would you?)
- 80% of the time, sufferers will improve if they seek help
Am I talking to you this morning? Are you embarrassed/ashamed because you feel anxiety, or an all-encompassing gloom that you can’t seem to shake? I hope not. My goal is always to see you thrive at work and at home. Life is too short to not feel happy/engaged, and there are answers.
Let me pass on some of the take-aways that I learned:
THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO AS AN EMPLOYED SUFFERER
- Stay home from work: Isolation is an incubator for depression to thrive in. Cutting yourself off from relationships makes the situation worse. Also, productivity is important to feeling healthy as a human being. Staying home alone in your pajamas is not helping.
THE BEST THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP A FRIEND/CO-WORKER STRUGGLING WITH MENTAL HEALTH
- Give them a safe place to talk about it. Don’t be shy; engage with them. If they had a broken leg you wouldn’t be afraid to ask about how they’re doing with it. When they have a mental injury, you shouldn’t be afraid to engage them either
- Take them for a walk: Walking produces endorphins which helps them feel good. It produces forward motion. It also gives them a place to talk about how they’re doing
Let’s care about each other, and do all we can to make our work environments happy and healthy.