Employees With Mental Health Issues Need An Employer’s Support

Mental health issues are being destigmatised and accepted as fact; managers need to incorporate this into the care they’re willing to provide staff.

The UK loses £70bn ever year due to mental health sickness leave at work; and it is estimated that one in four of us will experience such an illness at one time in our life.

45 per cent of people report that therapy helped them recover from their mental illness – an underwhelming number which implies that external factors will have to promote recovery in order to bring more people back into the effective workforce.

Stress, whether from work or from personal issues, can dramatically drop productivity.

Renaissance Life Therapies say that health issues should be ‘nipped in the bud’; managers need to recognise the need to support staff and how to enable it. Laura Barnes, managing director of content company Palaver Maven, said: “Accessing therapy via Skype has enabled me to fit sessions within a hectic schedule and helped me to focus on my business goals and creating a manageable strategy for delivering them.”

The potential for digital therapy and support should be combined with occasional check-ins to evaluate employee feelings about their company and how they feel in their own life.

Managers should not neglect their own feelings, and should take the time to evaluate their own feelings in order to be the most effective at work.

By Jack Flanagan