MENTAL HEALTH
Smashing mental health stigma amid the pandemic
The stigma around mental ill health may still exist, but the COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst to break down some of it and potentially change the way companies support their staff.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its many lockdowns forced companies to go digital, with many staff working from home and isolating away from others. This isolation brought mental health into the spotlight. But, as the world reopens, has the way companies focus on the mental health of staff really changed?
The deterioration in people’s mental health has become a key talking point within and outside the workplace, said Kirsty Plank, volunteer at My Black Dog.
Plank moderated a session with Intelligent Insurer focusing on mental health in the workplace.
Carly Eggar, training and development consultant at Train and Assure, believes the way people are talking about mental health has changed.
“We went through a stage where some organisations were understanding that they needed to do something around mental health but it became a tickbox exercise,” she said.
The pandemic has been a “catalyst”, said Eggar, although she warned that it’s not been quite enough.
“We’ve changed the way we work and how we connect with people. The main impact I’ve seen is that loss of connection. As human beings we are hard-wired to connect with people; we’re not meant to be solitary creatures,” she added.
Agreeing, Katarina Archer, client services manager and wellbeing leader at HDI Global UK, said that the insurance industry had managed to “smash the stigma quite well” at the beginning of the pandemic.
“It was a very important point when we broke the stigma for the first time in the history of the insurance industry, thanks to the pandemic.”
However, what started well—people and organisations devoting time to mental health and wellbeing—seems now to have taken a step backwards.
“We need to be careful now to hold the space we have already created.”
Katarina Archer, HDI Global UK
“In my opinion, we are going backwards. You are too busy to attend seminars, take a lunch break, meditate, etc. We need to be careful now to hold the space we have already created and not let that slip,” said Archer.
Unfortunately, added Stephen Card, chairman of Carbon Underwriting, a stigma around mental ill health still exists.
“We work in a very ‘macho’ business and that is the attitude which tends to prevail. We’re trying to break that down across the entire industry,” he said.
Card added that initiatives such as Heads Together (a mental health initiative spearheaded by the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke of Sussex) have been beneficial in propelling mental health to the front and centre of the public’s minds.
Building resilience
The panellists discussed why mental health is just as important as physical health and how employees can seek to have good mental health.
“Mental health in many ways is more important than physical health. When you break things they can generally be mended. Mental health is much more difficult—to diagnose in the first case, the acceptance of it (both individually and externally), and finally resolving it in some way,” said Card.
He added that we must be more accepting of people and their disabilities, however they are evidenced, and to “create a workplace where we are completely inclusive of all of this”.
Archer added that mental health can manifest in your physical health afterwards.
“By looking after mental health you are looking after your whole,” said Archer, adding that HDI’s wellbeing programme tackles physical and mental health, along with other priorities such as financial and environmental wellbeing.
“We work in a very ‘macho’ business and that is the attitude which tends to prevail.”
Stephen Card, Carbon Underwriting
“The employer’s job is to share those tools where you can then pick and up and create a cocktail in a way that will work for you.”
Archer said that we need to start to be responsible for our health, recommending that employees work on their own wellbeing path, much like they would on their career path.
“You will not survive this constant change if you are not working on yourself,” she said.
Agreeing, Egger said that mental health must take priority.
“It’s not something that can be left as an ‘if I get the chance’, or ‘if there is nothing else to do’, because there will always be something else to do. We need to accept that this is a primary need we all have and it’s not going away, it’s not going to go anywhere without some kind of action.”
The panellists advised companies looking to facilitate conversations around mental health and put beneficial initiatives in place to support people with a “prevention rather than cure” mindset.
Deloitte’s 2020 report “Mental health and employers: the case for refreshing investment” found that, on average, a higher return on investment (ROI) can be achieved by early interventions.
Organisation‐wide culture change and awareness-raising can provide a ROI of £6 for every £1 invested, while proactive training provides £5 for every £1 invested. However, reactive support, such as offering employees therapy or treatment once their mental health had worsened, provides a return of only £3 for every £1 invested.
Ultimately, said Archer: “There is no healthy business without healthy people. We need to keep promoting mental health. It’s not a luxury, it’s a basic.”
Image: Shutterstock / eldar nurkovic
