Mental health is the big topic on everyone’s mind - and for good reason. In the era of social media and 24/7 news, it is more important than ever to understand our mental health. It is even more important to realise the ways in which we can improve and protect it from the negatives we face every day.
For many people, work can be a major obstacle to positive mental health, but that simply doesn’t need to be the case. This article will give you a complete guide to mental health in the workplace and drop in some tips and tricks to help it improve it for you and those around you.
Mental Health Network
Networking is a dreaded word to a lot of us, but in this context, we should all get excited and take heart from the idea. It all starts from the principle that you’re not alone in feeling as you do.
20% of people are struggling with some type of mental illness - and a lot of us are not comfortable opening up and talking about it. A mental health network can help with this.
The concept of a network is simple. It is a workplace collection of individuals who are all willing and open to listening to others' problems, while also sharing their own. Advice has shown that making these genuine connections in your career and life can be extremely helpful in making individuals feel like they belong.
Humans bond over emotions and struggles, not just over workplace drama and interesting gossip. It is therefore essential to lean into these human desires and use them to our advantage. These forms of networks promote happiness and inclusivity as well as a genuine sense of being yourself in the workplace.
Moreover, openness breeds openness so why not be the first domino in the chain and start your workplace’s first mental health network?
Be Human
Being human is to both succeed and to fail, and far too many of us are fearful of failing. We all have shortcomings, and this is something that we should be proud of! Being a professional doesn’t mean being a high functioning, no mistake-making robot. Rather it means knowing your team’s weaknesses and working to support each other to overcome them.
Show off your weakness, don’t try to hide it from others, whether it is an irrational fear or anxiety over those monthly presentations. Talk about it with your colleagues and open up. You will not be the only person to struggle with those feelings and you certainly won’t be the last. As mentioned before, sharing helps build bonds and having those close bonds might prove useful in relieving anxiety during tough situations in the future.
Furthermore, share more about yourself than who you are in the workplace. It is important to have boundaries between work and life, which this article discusses later, but it is also important to not have two totally different and competing personalities. Bring yourself to the workplace and you’ll find that reverting to who you really are afterwards and enjoying yourself becomes a lot easier.
Unplug
24/7 communication has been upon us for decades and it is frequently cited as one of the main causes of workplace fatigue. The expectation that workers should be available, or at the very minimum, contactable during non-work hours is widespread and has serious detrimental effects on your health and well-being. It is therefore essential to unplug, put the phone on mute, log out of emails and set firm boundaries between yourself and your workplace.
It is also essential to communicate this boundary to those at work and your bosses. Emphasise to them that you will not be communicated outside of work hours and therefore they will have no expectations of a response from you. This will allow you to genuinely turn off and, hopefully, make your bosses also turn off after work and stop pestering you and your colleagues!
This approach should also be applied when you’re at work! Make use of your lunch break, go somewhere new, go somewhere familiar but at a minimum get away from your desk. It is vital to make a distinction between places of work and places of rest.
Check What’s Available
You’re not the first person to think about mental health in your workplace, and hopefully the individuals before you have been pragmatic enough to set up systems to support their workers. The vast majority of workers, however, do not make the most of the resources made available by their HR departments.
If you use these resources, they are more likely to improve and become an accepted norm in the workplace. It is vital to be a trendsetter in the world of workplace mental health.
Closing Thoughts
This is by no means the only option available to promote your mental health at home - and it not every strategy will work for you. Some things work for some and some don’t - and that is perfectly fine. The most important lesson to take away from this article is to be conscious of your mental health and to know it’s okay to not feel okay.
