It’s great to see mental health finally gaining traction with political parties. Whilst we’ve made many fantastic gains all fields of medicine over the last 50 years, it seems that in terms of political priorities mental health has been the poor relation to physical health and the curing of disease. However, a greater focus on more holistic health is for me a sign that we are progressing as a society. That we are willing to understand more, rather than disparage, and that we are becoming more sophisticated. However, it’s been a long time coming and sadly suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK, and, in short, the status quo can’t continue. According to the Health and Safety Executive in 2014/15, 440,000 people in the UK reported work related stress at a level they felt was making them ill. I will leave to the experts to perhaps give greater insight into these shocking figures, but the political debate sparked me to write about something I’ve often thought.
I’ve been in recruitment for 17 years and I’m almost too scared to calculate exactly how many people I’ve interviewed. Let’s put it this way, it would be the most amazing cricket innings in history. Anyway, for some time I’ve felt that a lot of people have a mini-breakdown or crisis about every seven years in their working life. The scale of this crisis of course varies from “I need a break”, which is probably the majority, to “I’m really struggling, but can’t articulate it” and is something more worrying. I suppose during this time frame a great deal can happen to increase stress levels: recessions, booms, divorces, relationship highs and lows, which don’t lead to divorce, the birth of children, promotions, redundancies, a demanding boss, or even just a bad work/life balance. All of these things to deal with, whilst social media is telling us all how great everyone else’s life is, how their children always go straight to sleep, or how supportive their partner is, whilst many people are there, quietly struggling.
What has often struck me is that it’s often those we would stereotype as high flyers, who are the most affected by burnout. Confusing a stereotype from politicians, but one that illustrates the point well, it is those with the “broadest shoulders” who are often struggling. It could be the pressures of their responsibilities, the increased traveling their new role requires, the bandwidth they need, or not having many peers (it’s lonely at the top and often not what people expect it to be). I also often pick up on this feeling of struggling when someone is very loyal to a firm and there is a period of negative change. However, it’s a great unspoken problem and indeed most of us are unqualified to spot the signals of mental health issues. I wonder, though, how often a good employee has been labelled as underperforming, when they have been going through a temporary period of mental health issues, and how often somebody a business wouldn’t want to lose resigns due to needing a new challenge.
There’s an awfully long way to go and it raises all sorts of questions about the role of companies in society, and how pastoral firms should be. However, regardless of individual opinion on this 40% of all work-related illness is stress related, and so there is a productivity related benefit to firms to ensure that they are sensitive to their staff’s mental needs. I suspect that larger firms, or public sector bodies, are better placed to start the process of being supportive to employee mental health. However, I hope over the next few years we really see this being championed by government, firms, and leaders because we all benefit.
For more information, please visit NHS’ page on stress in the workplace.
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