Mental health and wellness have been a hot topic as of late. People have started to get more comfortable with acknowledging the impacts poor mental health can have on the rest of the body, as well as their work, school, and interpersonal relationships with others. More awareness has been brought to the attention of the community as a whole and multiple studies have been done on mental health and wellness.

Before the pandemic even started, back in 2017, a survey was done by Mental Health America asking employees across various industries their thoughts and feelings on how work place stress has affected them. A whopping 63% of the survey respondents at that time indicated that work related stress was having a huge impact on their mental and behavioral health. Over 1 in every 3 people that participated in this survey reported that they had engaged in unhealthy behaviors in response to that stress they were experiencing at work. To learn more about this, head to the National Security Council here.

Fast forward to 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic has surged, and there are more recent reports that have been done regarding general mental health and wellness amongst the population and the results are tragic. According to the Washington Post, since the pandemic began, there has been an increase in suicide related thoughts due to covid. The CDC has reported that compared to 2018, there has been a 25.5% increase in suicidal thoughts amongst young adults ages 18-24 up from 10.7% in 2018, and an 11% increase in people of all other ages up from 4.3% in 2018.

Because America’s system for monitoring suicides is broken at best, it will easily be a couple more years until we find out if the actual rate of suicide has increased post-pandemic, but this initial forecast is very disturbing. 

So, what do we do about this mental health crisis? Given that much of the stresses of work are a key contributor to poor mental health, you as an employer can take a few steps to help keep your employees feeling supported by your company, management and other collogues, even if they are experiencing a bout of mental crisis. If employees feel supported by their employer, there is a decrease in absenteeism, decrease in overall healthcare costs, and employees are less likely to leave the company due to not feeling heard or understood.

1. Encouraging “safe zones” and “open door policies” in your company is a good first step into getting your employees to feel more comfortable with sharing how they’re feeling, as well as any concerns they may be having with work. Many people simply don’t talk about what is bothering them because of the stigma centered around mental illness and mental health, leading them to bottle it up and engage in unhealthy coping mechanisms or lashing out at other collogues which could end up costing a lot more in the long run-in terms of money, resources, and relationships than if they had a safe place to talk about what’s going on in the first place.

2. Post phone numbers and resources for mental health in an area where all employees have access to them. That way, if you have employees who are less inclined to talk about their mental health to management, they will still have the option to get help anonymously.

3. Allow your employees a set amount of “mental health” days, bereavement days, or personal days if possible so they can handle what’s going on without you penalizing them for it, and encourage them to take them by offering PTO for those days.

4. Host mental health trainings regularly and educate your employees on how to recognize stress or other symptoms of poor mental health and mental illness. Knowledge is power, and when it comes to mental health concerns, employees can’t be too informed about how to handle them. Offer resources during these trainings, such as flyers or booklets featuring ways to appropriately cope with stress and poor mental health and include phone numbers for the suicide prevention hotline, crisis hotline and other resource hotlines that people can call if they need help. It may also be helpful to list links to websites that offer resources for mental health as well, such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness or NAMI, and others that may be more relevant to your community/city/state, such as RHA Prevention Resource Center which is located in Asheville, NC. 

For more information and ideas on how to handle employee mental health and illness, we strongly recommend that you visit the National Safety Council website page specific to mental health and safety in the workplace here.