{"id":3168,"date":"2020-12-03T11:28:51","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T10:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/?p=3168"},"modified":"2020-12-03T11:28:51","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T10:28:51","slug":"mental-health-issues-still-an-invisible-illness-in-the-workplace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/2020\/12\/03\/mental-health-issues-still-an-invisible-illness-in-the-workplace\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental Health Issues: Still an Invisible Illness in the Workplace?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How would you describe a modern workplace?<\/p>\n

I would say that in contrast to the standard 9-to-5 workdays with assigned tasks and work desks, the modern workplace comes through as this upbeat, inspiring, flexible, fun, and rather casual environment. Just scrolling though some images of a modern office, such as at Google or Facebook, you get the entrepreneurial vibe, the feeling that these spaces encourage people to collaborate, create and thrive. In this modern workplace, there is more balance with personal life, you can sometimes work from home and attend your ZOOM meetings in sweatpants. You are drawn back to the office as well though, as there is a pool table there, nice lounge spaces\u2014plus, you can bring your pet along.<\/p>\n

Although this may seem like a somewhat exaggerated picture, I think we can generally agree that modern workplaces strive towards a more humane, personalized, inclusive and engaging environment. Paradoxically though, even such environments still tend to struggle with an open, destigmatizing and inclusive approach to the topic of mental health.<\/p>\n

As a matter of fact, mental health issues are very common. According to the WHO data<\/a><\/span>, one in four people in the world\u00a0is affected by mental health issues at some point in their lives. Moreover, the WHO considers depression to be one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, which, coupled with anxiety, costs about 1 trillion dollars per year in reduced productivity. Naturally, mental health issues don\u00b4t stay at home and it would be ignorant not to assume the same prevalence and influence of mental health issues in the workplace. A recent \u2018Mental Health at Work\u2019 report<\/a> by Mind Share and partners indicated that 60% of respondents in the US have experienced negative mental health symptoms, yet, for many, talking about these struggles at work feels neither comfortable nor normal. Estimates<\/a> of mental health of the workforce in Europe suggest that one or two in five employees might live with mental health problems at a given time. These numbers imply that each of us has a fairly high probability of facing mental health problems sooner or later, and that we have definitely shared an office, been in a meeting or had lunch with someone, who has been struggling with mental ill-being at the time… How often do we speak about our own or others\u2019 psychological health though? How often do you hear any colleague admitting to taking time off to support their mental health, and not just for \u2019personal reasons\u00b4? Are we as comfortable to admit leaving for an appointment to the psychotherapist, as we are candid about our dentist arrangements?<\/p>\n

Why then, in spite of such prevalence of mental health issues and genuine need for open dialogue about them, do mental health issues remain a somewhat invisible disease in the modern workplace?<\/p>\n

Naturally, there is a long tradition of stigmatization of mental illness, which we still have to deal with. Although in general we have moved quite far away from demonizing mental illnesses or treating mentally ill as criminals, the perception and treatment of mental health problems is not nearly as normalized and transparent as our approach to physical health.<\/p>\n

As such, we need to explicitly normalize mental health issues, increase transparency about it and continuously invest<\/a> in mental health support efforts. Each of us can start from more openly acknowledging our own struggles, and more attentively noticing and inquiring about the wellbeing of others. Management should lead by example<\/a> and create an open and inclusive culture which values mental health and supportively validates the lack of it. \u2018It is OK to have mental health struggles, and how can we support you?\u2019 could be our approach in a nutshell.<\/p>\n

Moreover, we might all be better at recognizing that \u2018it is OK to have mental health struggles along being a high achiever, a productive employee, and a thriving individual\u2019.<\/p>\n

Thinking specifically about the modern work environment, I get the feeling that this upbeat, inspiring, flexible, and fun world of work is actually fairly exclusionary towards the darker shades of reality\u2026 The occasionally stressed, depressed or anxious employees wouldn\u00b4t fit in the lounge area of a coworking space, would they?! Usually, the inspirational quote on the wall of such an office or on the office mugs will encourage you to \u2018dream big\u00b4, achieve, develop and \u2018live your life to the fullest\u00b4, rather than acknowledge your anxiety, or normalize feeling down from time to time as you work towards your goals. Although more humane, personalized and inclusive, the modern work culture is still largely about productivity, achievement and personal success. And we might not be used to the idea of an \u2018anxious achiever\u2019 yet…<\/p>\n

\u2019Anxious Achiever\u2019 is the name of a recently launched Harvard Business Review<\/em>\u00a0podcast<\/a> by\u00a0author and founder of Women Online,\u00a0Morra Aarons-Mele. The podcast aims to help rethink the notions of mental wellbeing and ill-being at work, normalizing mental health struggles also among high-achieving individuals. Indeed, if the world\u2019s most decorated Olympian Michael Phelps has openly admitted<\/a> to mental health struggles, why would we continue to stigmatize mental issues as a flaw or weakness?<\/p>\n

All in all, we do need to support each other\u2019s wellbeing more, we also need to collectively develop our mental health literacy and wellbeing skills, we need to decrease stress levels at the workplaces\u2026 and we need to recognize that as roughly 1 in 4 of us\u2014including highly successful individuals\u2014have their mental health battles, being good, strong, effective or successful \u00b4comes in many forms and does not require psychological purity or perfection<\/a>\u00b4\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How would you describe a modern workplace? I would say that in contrast to the standard 9-to-5 workdays with assigned tasks and work desks, the modern workplace comes through as this upbeat, inspiring, flexible, fun, and rather casual environment. Just scrolling though some images of a modern office, such as at Google or Facebook, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18330],"tags":[981,110609,110610,110611,104],"class_list":["post-3168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-views-and-news-about-expatriates","tag-leadership","tag-mental-health","tag-mental-health-issues","tag-work-culture","tag-workplace","megacategoria-mc-leadership-and-people-management"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3168"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3171,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions\/3171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}