Mental health: taking care of each other at work

By Elsie Hambrook, Times & Transcript

If you feel sick, you take time off work, maybe consult a health professional and when you go back to work, your co-workers will ask, maybe even tease you about it.

That’s if you’re physically sick. If you’re mentally ill, the story is often different.

Few of us take care of our mental health issues as readily as we do physical health problems, few of us consult for it and co-workers will rarely be as open or accepting if the illness is mental health related.

Whether it’s depression, stress, addiction or another mental health issue, one in five employees in Canada are affected by it. When something extraordinary brings attention to mental health issues in the workplace, like last month’s suicide at age 34 of former Member of Parliament Dave Batters, colleagues wonder publicly if there were signs and what they could have done.

Because we spend so much of our life at work, because not everyone has a family or the family is part of the problem, because we care about our co-workers and because mental health issues are a major drain on productivity, some attention is being paid to what colleagues and employers can do. The good news is that most mental-health problems in the workplace can be resolved.

There will be some people who will say that their workplace is what’s making them crazy. Conflict and stress in the workplace can contribute to depression, anxiety and other mental health problems and there are major studies and investments being made in the diagnosis and treatment of burnout, depression and substance abuse brought on by work.

Bill Wilkerson, co-founder of the Canadian Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health, has a list of “10 management practices driving us crazy,” including: “Got that done? Get this done”; “Lots of responsibility, not much discretion”; “Got something to say? E-mail me”; “What’s the priority? Everything”; and “Turned your cellphone off? Who told you to do that?”

But apart from banishing workplace conditions that create stress and abuse or that drain people’s enthusiasm for life, and monitoring the workplace psychological climate, employers and co-workers can take steps to support employees who are suffering from mental illness. There are examples of unions, mental health associations and employer groups that have awoken to the issue.

Creating healthy workplaces — workplaces that can deal with signs of mental illness, but also workplace bullying or signs of family violence — are the way to recruiting and retaining employees.

Mental-health issues reportedly account for 40 per cent of short-term disability claims and play a part in 50 per cent of long-term claims.

According to consulting firm Mental Health Works, psychological claims, especially depression, have overtaken cardiovascular disease as the fastest growing category of disability costs in Canada. The cost of not addressing stress-related disorders in the workplace, for example, is estimated at seven per cent of payroll.

A recent survey of Canadian workplaces found that 19 per cent of workers missed three or more work days due to depression, stress or anxiety in the last 12 months. It also found that very few managers had training to help them identify and deal with employees who exhibit signs of depression.

When co-workers and supervisors do not know what to do, mental illness — if it is noticed at all — will often be ignored or dismissed. “We know how to accommodate someone using a wheelchair, but we don’t understand depression,” as one Canadian psychologist and co-author of a workbook for employees with depression, said.

Common signs of mental illness seen at work include unexplained absenteeism, problems with concentration or memory, anxiety, lateness, lack of energy, irritability, rumination.

What to do? Watch for changes in people. Learn how to explore the situation rather than jumping to conclusions about the cause. Organize regular workplace education sessions on mental health issues and have pamphlets well displayed, partly to send the message that it’s OK to talk about it. Make everyone aware of what resources are available, such as insurance coverage and Employee Assistance Programs, when someone is in the grips of a mental illness. Have policies about transitioning back to work.

A recent mental health study conducted by Ipsos Reid, covering 6,800 employees in various sectors across Canada, showed that one employee in five feel they are working in a “psychologically unhealthy work environment.” Males are at a higher risk to suffer from mental-health issues, especially when working in transportation, warehousing, manufacturing, health care and public-health administration. Given the gender stereotypes still active in this society, strict compliance to what is prescribed for “a man to be a man” can be detrimental to their mental health: men may feel they must always put their job first, must never show emotion or ask for help and must downplay or sacrifice relationships that improve their quality of life and provide support in difficult times.

People struggling with mental illness often go to great lengths to hide it, especially in the workplace. Dealing with mental health issues openly, in the workplace and elsewhere, contributes to breaking the stigma that motivates that behaviour. Like they say about bullying, there are no innocent bystanders. When we look away when the illness is related to mental health, we are part of the problem.