Mental Health vs Physical Health

Mental Health as important as Physical Health at Work.

That is essentially the tag line of my LinkedIn Changemaker video – Have a quick view if you haven’t already, it’s only 60 seconds!

But what is the application of this phrase, what does it really mean?How can it be applied to your place of work?

Or to you, reading this article right now?

Thriving at Work

We are aware that the workplace is an environment we are allowed to and should have permission to thrive in, just as much as we do outside of work.

Thrive, not just physically but with our mental health and wellbeing too.

Have a look at this report from Mind, the national mental health organisation that put the term “thriving at work” on the map in recent years.

?https://www.mind.org.uk/about-us/our-policy-work/sport-physical-activity-and-mental-health/resources/thriving-at-work-guide/

Our mission, Let’s begin…

Are you sitting comfortably?

That’s a loaded question, I mean that literally for your physical alignment, but also how mentally comfortable are you right now, and what’s influencing that level of comfort?

“Is your chair ok for you?”

You could easily expect to get asked this question on day one of a new job, or even day 100 or day 1000, I could go on….

It seems OK, if not expected, to ask a colleague if their chair is right for their back without hesitation or thinking that’s an invasive question.

I’m sure if the answer that came back was “No, I need a more comfortable seat, this position is not good for my back” then it would be fixed immediately.

There must be a budget for a comfortable chair, either in an office, a home working environment, or an HGV delivery vehicle – it’s pretty much just standard.

I’m sure every manager is used to dealing with this and it’s just expected the conversation will come up.

We are all too aware that muscular skeletal issues are responsible (or thought to be) for having the most time off work – plus just the pure physical un-comfort we must deal with – which there is no stigma in discussing.

So, it gets sorted. The issue becomes fixed. It’s dealt with, quickly, efficiently, and all without YOU feeling bad that YOU are making a nuisance of something that is important to YOUR physical health.

Brilliant!

Changing the conversation

I perhaps would ask someone at work, are you FEELING comfortable.

Example:

“Gary, how do you FEEL about your working pattern, is it suitable for you now?”

Or?

“Michelle, how are you FEELING since your return to work from maternity leave”

And when they would reply, that yes, they feel fine, it’s all manageable, as is usually the first response – it’s time to offer up a challenge and see if there is more to the story.

That’s the first step to making mental health as important as physical health.?

Why?

Because we KNOW that sitting for 6/8/10 hours a day is not actually that great for your physical health – so we pre-empt the problem and think of the solution in advance and make that solution available in the workplace.

So, it’s now 2021, and I think mostly we now know what environmental factors at work can be detrimental for our mental health.

Excessive daily emails/workload or the emotional shock of no longer parenting full time and returning to work after parental leave are simply two examples of an infinite number of factors, the effects of which can begin to be mitigated if we just simply discuss them, honestly and openly.

Once we begin discussing more frequently to what “psychological safety” or “mental health at work” or simply “wellbeing” means for us in the workplace, we will rapidly be able have more ways to offer a solution to help, in a more scaled way, and it becomes the workplace norm.

Bridging the gap of Mental & Physical

In this article I’m not going to discern between the spectrum of experiences or severity of ill mental health – that is subjective to the individual, however I wish to highlight the importance that all levels of psychological experience and possible factors effecting those experiences, in the workplace, should be taken into consideration.

I used to run my own a personal training and fitness business for a decade so I know all too well a few reasons why we can put the importance of physical over mental.

1.?????We cannot see our mental health.

I used to put a new personal training client through a variety of tests and have hard data to make the appropriate choices to help guide and improve their wellbeing, this gave both me and the client a visual, things like resting heart rate, body fat percentage, muscular imbalances, etc.. plus a trained and experienced eye can more easily spot someone who needs more physical help.

We cannot see our mental health; it can only be described through conversation – this makes it more subjective rather than objective but, absolutely, no less important.??

2.?????We visually can compare to others easily.

When in the gym, we are attaining to what the reality of those around us look like – it’s easy to see visually a snapshot of the average human and therefore go some way to talking about what we need to do to be ‘healthy’. We can see the good and we can’t hide the bad.

There is a stigma around discussing our mental health as we pretend to be OK but if we really knew that the average state of our colleague’s mental health was closer to our own, perhaps we would be more open to having this conversation at work.

This recent case study on “pleasanteeism” which is a term for putting on a brave face with our mental health and why we do it - is a good example of what I’m talking about.

3.?????We know the pathway of how to get physically fit

We have been doing physical health well for a long, long time, we know what works and doesn’t work, putting holistic plans in place and understanding habitual processes of the individual to make their physical health improve over a short period of time.

If we think that the first health clubs sprang up here in the 70’s, we have had decades to understand what we do collectively to get fit physically and make it stick.

Setting the Standard

In work we don’t quite yet understand what that looks like for our mental health as we simply have not been discussing it for a long enough time to get this level of understanding.

It’s getting there though. If you want to know what good practice looks like – here is the detail that can be implemented from a recent ISO health and safety at work revision covering “psychological safety at work” – I would recommend any people managers to read and think about implementation in their workplaces but also to understand what should be in place for you, as the individual or employee.

This certainly should stimulate a conversation for change on both sides.

Mental Health as important as physical health at Work.

Let's get started today.....

This article was written as part of the LinkedIn #Changemakers campaign – a campaign shining a spotlight on individuals using LinkedIn to drive genuine change in the world of work. To find out more about the partnership, read more?here. And if you want to join the conversation, share the one thing you’d like to change about the world of work in a post on LinkedIn with the hashtag?#ConversationsForChange.