Stress Management, Happiness & The Taboo of Mental Health at Work
- Guest post by
Mark Walsh of Integration Training
There
are lots of way of talking about people being unhappy and suffering from mental
health issues at work...except sometimes there isn’t. I work in the field of
leadership, resilience and stress management training and it has become obvious
to me that many organisations have a problem talking about vital staff welfare
issues.
Stress Management Taboos
“Stress”
is a relatively acceptable corporate word for suffering. The concept takes an
integral psycho-social-cultural-organisational issue and makes it an individual
matter. Someone is not overworked with an abusive manager in a horrible place,
they are stressed and need to manage their stress, for example. On the positive
side the idea of “stress management” (which was not in common usage until relatively recently)
can allow people in the workplace to talk about mental distress in a relatively
safe “scientific” way. There are still many organisations however where it is
still taboo to discuss stress. Often people are trying to be something more
than human, Superman or Wonder-woman perhaps, but end up creating an environment
where people feel less than human. Denying stress exists doesn’t stop it
destroying happiness, relationships and productivity. There are also
organisations where “stress” has become a byword for other taboos - such as
someone hating or being bad at their job, being bullied or working under
unhealthy conditions of one kind or another.
Happiness Taboos
The
common notion that we work for money not to be happy is odd and more than a
little sick in my opinion. Why should this be the case? Well, the narrative
that “you just have to work, so put up with...XYZ” is one that has been
reinforced by people who do not care about employees’ happiness. Happiness
itself has become something of a taboo 9-5 where it is considered largely
irrelevant. Happily (excuse the pun), the positive psychology and conscious
business movements have put happiness back on the agenda, showing
how it is vital for productivity and creativity as well as the obvious ethical
concern. This has led to a lean towards “happiness at work” and resilience
trainings rather than stress management in recent years. Interestingly I have
noticed that more men will sign up for a resilience training course (or even “mental
toughness” course) than for stress management.
Mental Health Taboos
I
am one of the teachers on the course 1 in 4 at
Grassroots Training. This is the proportion of people who will suffer from a
mental health problem in the UK in any one year, so mental health issues are
far from rare! The most common ones are anxiety and depression, and addiction
issues are also widespread if we class that as one too. Despite this mental
health is still a massive taboo in most workplaces. If you break your arm or
catch a virus and need time off work there would be no shame for most people,
yet it is common to deny, hide and feel shame about mental health issues.
Sadly, people that have mental health problems are often portrayed in the media
as dangerous, pitiable or comical and these stereotypes are alive in many
workplaces. In mental health awareness workshops when I describe how I once
suffered from depression, substance misuse issues and PTSD, people often seem
surprised that someone now extremely healthy and with a good business and
relationship can have had this history. The taboos that exist around mental
health issues at work are extremely damaging as may mean individuals are
discriminated against illegally, bullied on top of their difficulties or do not
seek appropriate support.
Positive Steps
Here
are some positive steps workplaces can take to reduce stigma in regard to these
issues at work:
- Acknowledge
that such issues exist and start discussion and debate
- Make
the law on these issues widely known
- Invest
in mental health awareness and resilience and stress management training. Of
course I’m biased and I do this work because I believe in it too.
- Have
someone responsible for these areas
- If
you have had such issues and feel safe to, talk openly about them. It only
takes one or two people to break a taboo and establish a new norm
Mark Walsh leads
business training providers Integration Training - based in Brighton, London
and Birmingham UK and the Netherlands. Specialising in working with emotions,
the body and spirituality at work they help organisations get more done without
going insane (time and stress management training), coordinate action
more effectively (team building and communication training) and help leaders
build impact, influence and presence (management
training). Clients include Unilever, the Sierra Leonian Army and the
University of Sussex. He is the most followed trainer on Twitter and YouTube
and has the Google no.2 ranked management training blog. Offline, Mark dances,
meditates and practices martial arts. His ambition is to help make it OK to be
a human being at work.
