So why do we treat Mental Health differently in the workplace?

Management tend to view Mental Health as an individual exercise of coping with life, but tend to ignore the working environment’s contribution to an individual’s Mental Health. And yet we have our own fatal viruses being tolerated in the workplace – Corporate Psychopaths, Toxic Teams and Apathetic Managers. “Bullying in the Workplace” is a commonplace term searchable on Google – and the irony is as adults we’ve come to accept this workplace bullying while at the same time decrying that occurring to children.

Once a workplace becomes unhealthy it really doesn’t matter how much care you take to tend to your own Mental Health, because there is a point where you get spat on by A N Other.  

And the reality is that both the culture and the perpetrators originate at the levels where change needs to happen.  Speaking out against it only invites scorn, and seeking appropriate help is generally met with resignation – “What can we do, we don’t have political power?”

This is not some nightmarish dreamed up scenario – I’ve experienced it, and in the end, my only choice was to leave it.  But I’m not alone – when you talk to people working for big companies you hear the same sad story. Yet people feel trapped by the responsibility of raising families and keeping their heads above water, unable to escape unhealthy environments.  

Provision for the Health and Safety of employees is made via Occupational Health Act and Regulations (different countries will have their own variation of OHS Act) but the tendency is to focus on physical safety.   The rationale historically, I believe, is that these Acts are rooted in the Industrialization era where the average worker was exposed to largely physical and chemical hazards.  But the average worker is no longer toiling in harsh environments, large numbers of employees now work in office spaces which rely on more interpersonal interaction to remain productive – and are then more exposed to the psychosocial stresses of the workplace than perhaps an operator working on a filling line.

And in these spaces competition for attention is more about your ability to navigate power politics to stake your tiny piece of territory, than it is about getting the job done.  Now, of course, you may think keeping your head down (a phrase I learnt to loathe) would be the ideal way of getting your job done.  Why get caught up in the petty struggles of would be tyrants when you could just do your bit and go home to your family?  The sad reality is that that only works if you’re content with being a pawn in someone else’s game and have no aspirations of being anything more than a worker ant scurrying around aimlessly until you die.

Companies need to start waking up to their responsibilities.  Reframing Organizational Cultures with clever phrases and consultant bought values often fails the test when the expectation is a bottom up implementation with little top down authenticity.  Until CEOs realise that  management practices and styles directly impact the real culture of the organization rather than employee buy in, Mental Health will always be a neglected priority.