MENTAL HEALTH THE
Anthony Thompson, Lecturer in Business & Occupational Psychology at Coventry University and Lead Educator on FutureLearn’s free online emotional intelligence course, discusses the current state of mental health in the workplace.
Mental health is an umbrella term which captures a broad spectrum of conditions and durations which can range from short-term experiences of low mood, stress and anxiety all the way through to substantial long- term conditions such as burnout and depression.
Estimates suggest that each year approximately one in four of us in the UK will experience a mental health issue, and in England, one in six people report experiencing common mental health problems such as anxiety or depression in any given week.
Mental health shapes our psychological, emotional and social well-being and can strongly influence how a person thinks, feels and acts. This is particularly pertinent when we consider the impact that this can have within the workplace.
A recent CIPD study found that mental health issues can have a substantial impact on employee performance with findings suggesting that employees who are suffering from a mental health condition are more likely to get into conflict with colleagues, find it harder to juggle multiple tasks, find it difficult to concentrate, take longer to do tasks and are potentially less patient with customers and clients.
Furthermore, findings from a survey by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work suggest that
30
between 50%-60% of all lost working days have some link with work-related mental health issues. Clearly, the impact of mental health issues in the workplace cannot be understated. Conclusions such as these have led to a rise in the development of policies and frameworks, both at a governmental and organisational level, in an attempt to tackle the incidence of workplace mental health risks.
During its publication on mental health policy, the World Health Organisation (WHO) argued: “The development and implementation of a workplace mental health policy and programme will benefit the health of employees, increase productivity for the company and will contribute to the benefit of the community at large.”
Despite this, a debate has been taking place in the scientific and policy literatures about the lack of clarity in regulatory frameworks and related guidance on mental health at work. In a recent large-scale survey of 31 European countries it was found that less than a third of organisations had procedures in place to directly tackle workplace stressors and that 42% of managers reported finding mental health issues more difficult to deal with compared to physical health issues citing factors such as the sensitivity of mental health, lack of awareness and training as barriers.
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