Mental Fitness: Getting Proactive to Prevent Mental Health Risk

Dr. Bill Howatt

?Employers can play a significant role in preventing mental health risk beyond providing supports when employees are experience mental health concerns. The purpose of this article is to introduce how mental fitness can be put in place as a protective factor for employee emotional well-being.

?Most employers understand the quality of their employee’s physical health predicts their risk of physical illness, meaning they know the algorithm for good physical health (i.e., exercise, diet, sleep, and lifestyle choices). This is why many employers provide programs to support employee’s physical health.

?The WHO promotes the value of regular physical activity to prevent and manage noncommunicable diseases like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and several cancers.?Employees can mitigate their risk of chronic illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, cancer, and cardiovascular disease by developing healthy habits.

?The ROI can be dramatic when employers help employees learn how to prevent physical illness. However, many employers have not made preventing mental illness a priority. One reason and barrier is stigma. Typically, when mental health is brought up, most employers’ and employees’ minds jump to mental illness or mental disorders.

Now ask the average employer or employees what the algorithm for good mental health is, most will guess or admit they don’t know. Why? One explanation is there appearing to be societal gap between mental health and physical health parity. Meaning physical health concerns are much more funded than

?The ripple effect to many employers is when they consider mental health they focus on creating budget for support programs for employees experiencing mental health concerns that is akin to a physical health ER room one goes to when at risk. EFAP firms will promote they do prevention but ask the average worker what EFAP is, and you will discover the truth.

?As a result most employers consciously or unconsciously default their investment dollars for mental health to provide employees with valuable supports in time of need such as EFAP, extended benefits for access to psychologists and online cognitive therapy solutions.

?Cost of mental illness in the workplace rising

The WHO refers to depression as a leading cause of disability and lost time globally. The Mental Health Commission of Canada estimates that one in five Canadians lives with a mental illness.1 Canadian men are at significant risk of depression, as reported in a study that suggests around 50% meet the criteria for depression.

?Workers’ short-term disability claims due to mental health issues increased by 6% and duration by 12% in 2021.[1] Mental health?issues account for 30%-40% of?short-term disability?(STD)?claims.[2] Claims for mental health support increased by 24% during 2020, according to data from Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association members.[3]

Employers are responsible for providing support for mental illness and mental health concerns in the workplace. Providing mental illness prevention and education, like that for physical health, to prevent mental harm and promote mental health, also falls under their domain.

?Mental fitness is a prevention opportunity for mental illness

Mental health can be defined as the percentage of time a person experiences positive emotion (i.e., flourishing) versus unpleasant emotion (i.e., languishing). Positive psychology is a growing field pioneered by Martin Seligman, promoting and teaching that people can be taught and encouraged to develop intrapersonal knowledge, skills, and habits to live their best lives.

?Mental fitness is a mental illness risk prevention approach that primary goal is to teach employees the knowledge and skills that when become habits can positively impact their emotional well-being. The foundation he suggests for good mental begins with four dimensions (i.e., bodies, emotions, thinking, and relationships) that collectively influences how a person feels about themselves, others, and their life.

?There are literally 100’s of different micro-skills (e.g., emotional regulation) that can be applied each of the four dimensions to provide a variety option for how employees can learn to develop habits that can have a positive impact on their emotional well-being. It can be helpful to think of emotions as being nothing more than neurochemicals that influence how some feels, for example, stress drives cortisol where acts of kindness drives oxytocin. What employees experience in the workplace as well learn to do, and think can have a positive impact on their overall well-being.

? Live well when feeling unwell is a sign of good mental health -Dr. Bill Howatt

?Mental health supporting training and information may be useless if it fails to facilitate employees to develop daily and on-demand habits that protect their mental health. Another critical factor for protecting and prevention of mental health risk is to ensure the employer is paying attention to the fact that every human interaction and experience can influence the employee’s emotional well-being and perceived stress level.

Sending employees to a resiliency program or giving them a resiliency mental health app seldom has an impact that results in new habits. Employees need their employers take an active role in managing psychosocial risk factors (e.g., work demand) to monitor the degree each factor is charging and draining the employee’s batteries.

?Three tips for how to effectively facilitate mental fitness.

Mental fitness is about creating habits, and like physical health when it comes to mental health there is no goal line. Employers who engage in mental fitness programming do so because they understand it is for the five in five workers:

• Teach employees how to develop a personalized mental fitness plan — this plan maps out how the person can create positive emotions on demand. ?There again many kinds of micro-skills that can help a worker improve their body (e.g., walk 10 steps a day), emotions (e.g., master emotional regulation), thinking (e.g., challenge faulty assumptions), relationships (e.g., develop self-compassion). Meditation is good for everyone, but not all workers buy in. Why is helpful to help workers discover how to build a mental fitness plan and how to get exposed to different micro skills for each of the four domains. Dr. Bill Howatt’s personalize mental fitness plan includes starting his day with a cold shower, a daily target of 10,000 steps, playtime with his bulldog, daily journalling, and fasting for 18 hours. He gets eight hours of sleep, drinks four liters of water, focus on eating quality food and enjoy discovering different kinds of mental fitness micro-skills through daily research and reading. He sits with a partner to do a gratitude log and ends his day with meditation. One tool employers that care about providing their employees opportunity to develop their mental fitness is MFIQ it promotes a two way accountability model.
• Educate employees how they show up daily matters — All employees and leaders have an influence and can support others’ emotional wellbeing by how they show up and what they do (e.g., random acts of kindness like bring a peer a coffee). Understanding that every little human interaction with another can be a drain or a charge to both individuals. A helpful fifth dimension to build into an employee mental fitness plan is influence. The primary focus of this dimension is focuses on developing knowledge and skills to deal with how to positively influence others (e.g., be an upstander versus a bystander to protect peers from bullying and harassment).
• Employers creating psychologically safe and inclusive workplaces — Employers can facilitate protective factors like psychologically safe leaders and assigning budgets to get employee access to employee support (e.g., psychologists) as well to develop and maintain their mental fitness habits. Mental fitness programming can help remove stigma by normalizing talking about mental fitness like we all do with physical fitness. Taking care of one’s emotional well-being shows responsibility and is good for the employees, families, and employer. Employers must also understand that there is no goal line, and workers’ mental health will not be dramatically supported by offering random resiliency programs and apps that show they care. However, employers can promote mental fitness to develop habits that protect employees’ mental health by taking a role in influencing the environment and employees experience that can create more charge than drains.

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The Workplace Psychological Safety Assessment (WPSA) is an evidence-based, confidential assessment tool designed to provide employers with an understanding of their employee's current workplace experience through a psychological safety lens.

?It also provides employees with personal insights on improving their experience and mental health within the workplace context.

For more information, visit: https://www.howatthr.com/workplace-psychological-safety-assessment/ ?

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?References:

1 Smetanin, P., Stiff, D., Briante, C., Adair, C. E., Ahmad, S. and Khan, M. The Life and Economic Impact of Major Mental Illnesses in Canada: 2011 to 2041. RiskAnalytica, on behalf of the Mental Health Commission of Canada 2011.

2 Dewa, C. S., Chau, N, Dermer, S. Examining the comparative incidence and costs of physical and mental health-related disabilities in an employed population. J Occup Environ Med. 2010 Jul;52(7):758-62. doi: 10.1097/JOM.0b013e3181e8cfb5. PMID: 20595909.