Mental health and physical health are both very important to me. As an athlete, I understand firsthand how physical fitness can have a positive effect on mental wellbeing, and I suppose I’ve always had a side interest in mental health through increasing and maintaining my own physical health.
The term mental health can get confused. There’s an assumption that mental health and mental illness are the same thing. But everyone has mental health. It exists all of the time, in exactly the same way physical health exists all the time and it can go up or down.
Mental health has more of a stigma attached to it, and we only tend to consider it when there is a dip for some reason. That’s why it’s so important to maintain our mental health, even when we feel good.
What is Mental Health?
Mental health includes all aspects of wellbeing, encompassing emotional, psychological, and social factors. It affects how we feel, how we think, and how we act, and has significant impacts on how we handle stress, connect with others, and make decisions. Needless to say, I think this makes ensuring positive mental health a top priority.
Lots of things that we can control have an impact on mental health – like our diet, how much sleep we get, our physical fitness and the other people we interact with. I think there’s been a collective shift towards becoming more aware of mental health issues in the last few years, and slowly people are starting to see mental health in the same way they look at physical health. Personally, I see them as both sides of the same coin.
Why is Supporting Mental Health Important in the Workplace?
We spend so much of our time at work, so it’s a smart move to adopt good practices and support good mental health within the workplace. This can have significant impacts on employee well-being.
While everyone has their own distinct job role within a business, it’s ultimately the work we do as a team that affects our success. So it’s really important that the team is as strong as possible, and that every team member is supported in every way.
It all comes down to treating people as individuals. I like to think that Recite Me is a person-centric organisation where the person comes before the job role. When people feel valued and supported, they naturally perform to the best of their abilities, so the value of being a compassionate organisation works both ways. We have our own initiatives like flexible working, healthcare cash plan and our famous Recite Relax social events, all in support of having a positive impact on mental health.
What Mental Health Support Can Employers Provide?
Even though the attitude towards mental health and inclusivity is becoming more accepting, many people still feel the need to hide what they perceive as a weakness or failure, and are therefore reluctant to open up about their mental health at work. This means it’s often difficult to tell when people are struggling, because mental health problems can be more easily hidden than physical ones.
To provide a caring environment where staff excel, a “people-first” approach is the best way to go. Organisations need to take on more responsibility to be aware on a top-down scale, but also encourage their teams and individual employees to be more aware and genuinely supportive of mental health across the board.
Encouraging all-round fitness is another way to boost mental health. Often, people don’t see the interconnectedness of sleep, diet, physical health and extraneous variables like financial and legal concerns etc. Awareness of this is key so that people can ask for help before it’s too late and they become stressed, depressed, or experience burn-out.
Even small things like a few minutes away from their desk can help employees. A while back, we noticed that quite a few of our staff had backaches. So we organised for a yoga teacher to come in every couple of weeks and offer one-on-one stretches and massage. This had a big impact on mental health. But I don’t think it was just the physical relief. Just the flexibility to take a little time out of their working day had a positive effect, too.
How Does Accessibility Play a Part?
I see so many synergies between mental health and accessibility, diversity, and inclusion. First and foremost, it’s just the right thing to do. But accessibility makes a huge difference to mental health in general, as people are normally happier when they feel included. Likewise, when people feel excluded or disenfranchised, they tend to have more negative feelings.
A lot of mental health support starts with an online search. If that information isn’t accessible, the implications could be enormous for that person.
Inclusivity is at the core of accessibility. It’s about allowing a person to matter, regardless of any disadvantages or disabilities. Whether an individual is dyslexic, has a visual impairment, or speaks English as a second language, they don’t feel as alienated when society makes adjustments for them. This has a positive effect on the mental health of people who could otherwise have felt excluded because of their disabilities.
Again, it goes back to treating people as individuals and not attaching labels to problems. The premise of our accessibility and inclusion solutions and the benefits of mental health awareness are the same. It’s about creating a positive attitude towards inclusion, rather than seeing a person’s problems as something that needs to be fixed. As Alan Weiss, the entrepreneur, author, and public speaker once said, “Ask your customers to be part of the solution, and don’t view them as part of the problem.”
Accessibility and Mental Health: Tyneside Mind
We started working with Tyneside Mind in 2021, when the team deployed our inclusion toolbar on their website, to provide barrier-free access to crucial information and resources. This helps to avoid potential negative mental health effects caused by exclusion – something someone looking for support doesn’t need.
Our data shows that some of the most used pages on Tyneside Mind with the toolbar active are those linked to ‘getting help.’ If these pages didn’t have an inclusion tool, it could mean the difference between someone getting help and giving up.
Shamara Mohsin, Communications & Marketing Manager at Tyneside Mind said: “Tyneside and Northumberland Mind provides local people mental health help when they need it most, with support services that are flexible and responsive. That starts with a digital front door that is simple to use and designed with inclusivity in mind, made possible with Recite Me’s website toolbar.”
Modelling Good Mental Health Practices as a Business Leader
As a society, it’s to our benefit that everyone achieves good mental health. So I’d like to see schools, businesses, and communities being more consciously aware of mental health issues all year round, not just in Mental Health Awareness Week. That said, having an awareness week does give people the chance to talk about any aspect of mental health that they want to, and that can only be a positive thing.
Helping people to stay in a good place is a way better alternative than helping them out of a bad place. So in the future, I hope to see the attitude towards mental health transform into a prevention rather than cure way of thinking.
As a business leader, people take a steer from you more than you realise. Showing that you prioritise your own self care is a great way to model healthier behaviours. Noticing things like frequent late-night emails from the same person and checking in with them and resetting expectations. Starting meetings with some conversation that isn’t related to work, getting to know someone and helping them feel seen. If you take the time to slow down, you’ll inspire others, too.
