Protecting Mental Health at Work

Introduction

May is the Mental Health Awareness Month and it’s important that we bring attention to mental health and how essential it is to overall health and well-being of every individual. When our body isn’t working well, going to a doctor to seek help is considered as normal, whereas when we are struggling with our mental health for any reason we so often hesitate to seek support.

Mental health is a long-standing issue that has not received enough attention and a major reason why mental health is not addressed is that people associate mental illness with weakness and hide it.

India’s Mental Health Statistics

India is the world's suicide capital with over 2.6 lakh cases of suicide in a year. WHO statistics say the average suicide rate in India is 10.9 for every lakh people. 1 in a 5 has some emotional and behavioral problems. Close to 60 to 70 million people in the country suffer from common and severe mental disorders.

50% of mental health conditions begin by age 14 and 75% of mental health conditions develop by age 24. Mental illness can be triggered by multiple factors. Complex interactions between mind, body and environment result in psychological disorders. Some of the factors are long term acute stress, biological factors, drug abuse and overdose, cognitive behaviour like constant negative thoughts, low energy, etc, social problems like financial problems, breakdowns, isolation, etc.

Common Symptoms of Mental Health Issues ????

1. Persistent negative thoughts ?
2. Difficulty concentrating
3. Low energy or severely fluctuating energy levels
4. Hearing voices
5. Wanting to spend excessive amounts of time alone
6. Inappropriate and uncontrollable behavior such as excessive anger or sadness
7. Severe paranoia - a condition in which one believes that others are unfair, lying, or actively trying to harm you when there's no proof.

Types of Mental Health Issues

1. Depression - a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest.
2. Anxiety/Phobias - Intense, excessive and persistent worry and fear about everyday situations.
3. Eating Disorders - a type of serious mental health condition characterized by severe disturbances in eating behaviors and related thoughts and emotions
4. Constant State of Stress – Stress is body's response to physical, mental, or emotional pressure. Stress causes chemical changes in the body that can raise blood pressure. Mild stress is common but being in constant state of stress is harmful to both physical and mental health.
5. Schizophrenia - a serious mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally
6. Bipolar disorder ?- a disorder associated with episodes of mood swings ranging from depressive lows to manic highs.
7. Clinical depression - a mental health disorder characterised by persistently depressed mood or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life.
8. Suicidal tendency - a term that indicates the propensity of an individual to experience suicidal thoughts or attempt suicide.
9. Personality disorder - Personality disorders are a group of mental health conditions that are characterized by inflexible and atypical patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Workplace Mental Health Issues ??

Work can play a huge role in the overall health and welfare of every individual. In addition to the financial benefits, the job can add meaning, structure, and purpose to one’s life. It can also provide you with a sense of identity, bolster your self-esteem, and offer an important social outlet.

The most common mental health issues in the workplace are anxiety, depression, and stress. The statistics reveals that 60% of working professionals experience at least mild symptoms of anxiety, and 1 in 4 meet the threshold for clinically relevant symptoms of anxiety. ?

Causes of Workplace Mental Health Issues

Common work-related challenges that can negatively impact your mental health include:

• Long, inflexible hours, short-staffing due to cutbacks or unfilled vacancies, or an ever-increasing workload.
• A toxic workplace that fosters bullying, harassment, or abuse.
• Lack of training or guidance for the role you’re expected to fulfil.
• Limited or unclear communication from management about tasks, goals, or decision-making.
• Lack of support, shortage of equipment or other job resources, or unsafe working practices.
• Working remotely with no clear separation between work and personal time.

Tips to Protect Your Mental Health at Work?

When you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the demands of work, taking time away—for vacation/casual-day off can help you to recharge and avoid burnout. However, if you have a persistent mental health issue, such as depression or anxiety, you’re going to need expert interventions.

Caring for your mental health in the workplace isn’t just about dealing with immediate mental health problems, either. It’s also about promoting well-being. Even if you’re not facing a mental health challenge right now, taking steps to care for your emotional health can help you build resilience, improve your work performance, and provide you the tools to better cope with uncertainty and challenges in the future.

The following tips can help:

Switch off

Whether you’re working onsite or remotely, it’s important to strike a healthy work-life balance. That means taking regular breaks throughout the day and switching off your screens when the work day is over. Instead of making yourself available 24/7 to respond to work calls, emails, or other messages, it’s important to focus on friends and family and take the time to relax and recharge yourself.

Practice mindfulness and relaxation techniques

Relaxing and recharging requires more than just zoning out on the couch in front of the TV. To reduce the damaging effects of stress and protect your mental health, you need to activate your body’s relaxation response. This can be done by practicing relaxation techniques such as meditation, deep breathing, rhythmic exercise, or yoga.

Take care of yourself

Getting enough quality sleep at night, eating a healty, nutritious diet, and regularly exerciseing can make a huge difference to your mental health — at work and beyond. These are also aspects of your life that you have more control over than many things in your workplace. The more effort you put into self-care, the better you’ll feel.

Find meaning and purpose in your work

Even if you don’t love your job, you can still find ways to derive meaning and purpose from the work that you do. Try to focus on how your work helps others, for example, provides an important product or service, or the relationships you enjoy with your co-workers or learnings that you gain from the work.

Try to connect and collaborate

As human beings, we crave connection. Developing mutually supportive relationships with your co-workers, collaborating as a team, and having fun together can help ease stress and bolster your mood at work. If you’re not close to your colleagues, make the effort to pool resources on projects, work closer together, and be more social during breaks and outside the workplace.

Build resiliency

The more resilient you are, the better you’re able to tolerate the feelings of stress, anxiety, and hopelessness that can be generated by problems at work. Building resiliance also help you from setbacks in your career or personal life and help you maintain a positive outlook. Rather than being a macho quality, resilience is something that requires effort to build and maintain over time.

Preventing mental health conditions at work is about managing psycho-social risks in the workplace. WHO recommends employers do this by implementing organizational interventions that directly target working conditions and environments. Organizational interventions are those that assess, and then mitigate, modify or remove workplace risks to mental health. ?

Conclusion

As they say – ‘prevention is better than cure’. Mental health issues can be challenging to deal with but it is not impossible to overcome. Mental illness can be treated with the right kind of support, counseling and medication if need be but identifying these problems at an early stage is very important. As responsible individuals, let's be mindful of our thoughts and actions such that they don't become the cause for others' mental illness and also spread awareness about mental health.

Research Credit - www.carespot.com www.who.int and many other internet based resources.