It's Mental Health Awareness Week
There were predictions way back that the pandemic lockdown would cause a strain on people with mental health issues. Further more, that it would increase the number of people with mental health challenges as we locked down.
The tidal wave is coming. It is now predicted that one of the things that will dominate post lockdown UK, the world, is our mental health.
As Mental Health Awareness Week reaches its mid-point today, there are greater causes for concern as organisations, communities, businesses, health bodies and media are all reporting the increase is real. The tidal wave is breaking already.
I’ve seen an upsurge of social media hubs and online support services being promoted. Newspapers have lists such as nine free apps for your mental health.
Then I read a gritty article in The Guardian that made me think harder about how organisations - in other words, employers and their leaders - need to to do more than promote talking about mental health in our ‘new world’. The writer in this article shares her personal story with the headline that it is ‘nothing like a broken leg’. It made me realise that taking my Mental Health First Aid certificate a couple of years ago is really only one tiny action, and is in no way comparable with a line of thinking that it has an equivalency with ‘traditional’ first aid at work.
Everyone ‘doing their bit’ or being aware as a manager say, that people have mental health issues and holding 1-2-1s with them, managing it well, providing support and being in an organisation that provides substantial services and help in a number of ways will need a lot more than a few more resources thrown at it. And it’s all a bit scrappy when there needs to be a strategic shift in thinking and practice that mainstreams wellbeing, prioritising it right through the organisation from front line to CEO.
Mental health challenges have arisen from people being locked down and working from home and the associated set of understandable anxieties. As we go back into work, in what ever form it takes, this time we are going to need more than ‘having a conversation’ and providing an employee assistance programme. I know a number of organisations I provide services for are already doing more than this, so take this statement as a metaphor for the message - we all need to do more in these exceptional times than raise awareness and talk about things.
Services all around us are under funded, under resourced, ailing, failing even, under the strain. Pushing people onto a waiting list that can last months is not going to work this time around.
Organisations can act
I’d like to think that organisations address mental health as a priority as we come out of lockdown and do more themselves. I do believe awareness has been raised considerably, so now it is time to act:
resource it as a priority
provide programmes of support including ones that are peer led
boots on the ground: train all managers right to the top, and perhaps others such as wellbeing champions
integrate wellbeing into strategic planning across different parts of the business - join it up: it cross cuts with financial wellbeing, inclusion, diversity, using data, addressing organisational culture and values, benefits and rewards, working conditions, inter alia
provide enhanced EAPs - there are many paths to wellbeing
make sure policies don’t exacerbate employees’ mental health
promote wellbeing through performance management and appraisal and development processes and activities
recognise the value HR plays in helping to make all of this happen and work practically and professionally (and legally)
recruit new managers who can demonstrate awareness and capabilities in managing wellbeing at work
draw on effective practice by benchmarking excellence - I can recomend you speak with the HR staff in Buckinghamshire Council based in the Chiltern Office who were recently shortlisted for a REBA Employee Wellbeing Award for its health and well being strategy.
fast track and mainstream - this can’t wait for a committee meeting or having to jump through 'the burning hoops’ of layers of decision making
get ahead of the wave: we know it is coming
CEOs and directors are not exempt
people come first: without people we don’t have an economy, we don’t have a country that can get back on its feet, we won’t have purposeful or functioning organisations
have a culture of wellbeing at work
build peoples’ personal resilience skills
don’t abandon face to face training in groups in favour of online learning completely
promote and support peer led initiatives
collaborate and partner with others, both professional experts and, equally, those who are ‘experts by experience’
employ mental health workers for employee support in-house
No going back
I am one of those who is not for going back to how things were.
I am for normalising the importance of good mental health and wellbeing at home and work. This is more than awareness raising. And it’s not the same , god forbid, as saying ‘it’s normal’ etc. Looking after yourself includes not having to hesitate for a nanosecond at work in asking for help and being confident your manager and your employer ‘has your back’ in the new, re-imagined world of work.
Coaching plays its part
As a professional coach I’ve trained in resource based therapies recognised by the BPS. These help enhance the coaching conversations I hold without me crossing the boundary I will not go over into therapy. Using motivational interviewing and holding solution focussed therapy brief type conversations are two examples of what I mean by this.
I am confident using NLP coaching. Holding space for someone, asking precision questions and noticing patterns that highlight the structure of their experience (e.g. helping someone see cause and effect of feelings and thoughts) are ways I help someone open up routes for change for themselves.
Something everyone can do
The theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is kindness. Everyone can show kindness. It reduces stress and improves emotional wellbeing. As the guide says,
“Kindness could be built into business decisions, government policy and official systems in a way that supports everyone’s mental health and also reduces discrimination and inequality…..that can start by individual commitments to showing kindness in our words and our actions.“
Mark Rowland, Kindness Matters Guide, Mental Health Foundation
If you need help right now
Click here if you need to find support or help. It takes you to a getting help page on the Mental Health Foundation website.