Many of the organisations that I speak with, when I ask what they are doing to support mental health in their workplace, is met with a similar answer each time: EAP, wellness initiatives and, maybe if they are lucky, they’ve run some mental health awareness sessions.
“Tick, tick, tick….phew, we can say we’ve addressed mental health now…”
Now, don’t get me wrong, awareness is critically important in the process of working with our mental health. But it is only the first step. The current awareness offering is usually a single one-hour session that provides attendees of a list of disorders that one could expect to come across, some descriptions of the symptoms, and then a brief understanding of what we can do about it once it happens.
What is usually missing however is a true and genuine way of changing the way we see mental health and a level of skill-building that changes the way we deal with our mental health on a daily and longer term basis.
We need to make mental health a conversation that isn’t feared, judged or thought as anything different than other conversation of support we have. To do this, we need to create a new ways of thinking that practically and realistically integrate a lot of the old-age practices in our everyday modern lives. The scope of mental health is an incredibly broad area, from those who are thriving and want to simply become healthier in the mind, to those who are living with a crippling mental illness every single day, and the prescription for situations along the continuum can be very different. But there is also some key overlap between them that needs to be addressed to reduce the line that is drawn between them.
The key to a successful mental health program is to recognise the continuum that exists, changing the way we see mental health through a new lens, and upskilling employees on how to genuinely support themselves and others in their mental health journey.
At Grow Together Now, our mental health program is designed with this at its heart, using lived experience and neuroscience to create a unique experience for employees, that flips our current view of mental health upside down. We are about creating long term skills that support a healthy mind, whilst recognising the true understanding of what mental health is. We focus on the people in front of us and not a list of disorders. We make mental health a real and tangible conversation that can be had without the looming fear and despair of what could be.
Our mental health program is open for expressions of interest in 2019. Find out more today by reaching out, or visiting our website @ www.growtogethernow.com