Episode #36: Workplace Mental Health: Creating a Culture of Support with Mental Health America
In this episode, Kelly interviews Taylor Adams & Khendra Lucas from Mental Health America (MHA) on workplace mental health. Taylor and Khendra share stats on the state of the mental health crisis in America and how COVID-19 has impacted mental health in the workplace. They share strategies on how to support colleagues who may be struggling and provide resources on how employers can create a mentally healthy and supportive work environment.
Workplace Mental Health: Creating a Culture of Support with Mental Health America Episode Recap
In this insightful conversation, Kelly Callahan Poe discusses Workplace Mental Health and the importance of creating a culture of support with two remarkable guests, Taylor Adams and Khendra Lucas from Mental Health America (MHA). Mental Health America is a national advocacy nonprofit that champions the B4Stage4 Philosophy, aiming to address mental health conditions and their symptoms as soon as they arise. The organization prioritizes prevention, early intervention, and support for mental health challenges to create a more informed and inclusive society.
Khendra Lucas is a research associate based in Memphis, Tennessee, managing the operations for the Center for Research and Innovation at MHA. Khendra’s passion for systemic issues led her to MHA, where she found a fulfilling role aligned with her interest in workplace mental health. Taylor Adams, the Director of Workplace Mental Health at MHA, emphasizes the importance of prioritizing mental health in the workplace and helping organizations implement policies and programs to improve employee mental health outcomes.
The B4Stage4 Philosophy urges society to treat mental health with the same importance as physical health. Just as individuals undergo screenings and interventions for physical illnesses like cancer, MHA advocates for early detection, prevention, and support for mental health conditions before they reach severe stages. Khendra and Taylor both emphasize the significance of early intervention and prevention in mental health. By addressing mental health symptoms as soon as they arise, individuals can access the necessary support and resources, avoiding the escalation of challenges and barriers to treatment.
MHA encourages workplaces to prioritize employee mental health by creating a supportive culture. By destigmatizing mental health challenges and offering resources such as screenings and interventions, employers can play a pivotal role in fostering an inclusive and understanding environment. Taylor’s journey into workplace mental health was shaped by her own experiences, making her mission more personal and impactful. By drawing parallels between her past job experiences and her work at MHA, she strives to create positive change and enhance mental health support in workplaces.
MHA’s B4Stage4 Philosophy champions early detection, prevention, and support for mental health challenges. By treating mental health with the same care as physical health, individuals can access resources and support to address issues before they escalate. Kelly, Taylor, and Khendra’s insightful conversation sheds light on the importance of prioritizing mental health in the workplace and supporting employees at every stage of their mental health journey. By fostering an inclusive and supportive culture, workplaces can become catalysts for positive change in mental health awareness and support.
COVID-19 has undeniably had a profound impact on mental health worldwide. In this episode of the Two Marketing Moms Podcast, Mental Health America (MHA) representatives, Taylor Adams and Khendra Lucas, shed light on the implications of the pandemic on mental health in the workplace, sharing valuable insights and statistics.
The Impact of COVID on Workplace Mental Health:
Khendra highlights some alarming statistics from MHA’s “State of Mental Health in America” report. The data revealed that one in five American adults is experiencing a mental health condition, with many of them not receiving treatment. Additionally, two-thirds of youth with severe depression are not accessing the help they need. One of the most concerning figures shows that there is only one mental health provider available for every 350 individuals seeking treatment, exposing a significant gap in mental health support.
Taylor emphasizes that COVID-19 significantly affected mental health, leading to a rise in depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder screenings. As the pandemic progressed, interestingly, ADHD screenings gained prominence due to challenges in adjusting to the new normal.
Changing Concerns and the Importance of Supportive Work Environments:
Khendra explains how the focus of concerns shifted as people began to adapt to the changing circumstances. While loneliness and isolation topped the list initially, body image, self-esteem, and relationship dynamics emerged as pressing concerns.
Supportive workplace environments play a crucial role in addressing mental health challenges. MHA offers a range of resources, including 11 clinically validated mental health screeners, DIY tools based on cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, and destigmatizing modules on topics like substance use. These resources help individuals identify symptoms, access information, and connect with peer support.
Creating Mentally Healthy Workplaces:
Taylor emphasizes that employers can foster mentally healthy workplaces by implementing various strategies:
- Prioritize mental health: Leaders should make mental health a priority within their organizations, encouraging an open culture of support and understanding.
- Listen to employee feedback: Organizations should actively seek and respond to employee feedback, creating an environment where workers feel heard and supported.
- Provide resources: Employers can offer wellness toolkits, mental health support guides, and access to Employee Assistance Programs to help employees manage stress and other mental health concerns.
- Focus on people management: Good management practices are essential for employee mental health. Training managers in effective support techniques can enhance overall well-being.
- Foster inclusivity: Building an inclusive work environment can help employees feel supported and safe in discussing mental health challenges.
The impact of COVID on workplace mental health has been significant, highlighting the need for proactive measures and support. Mental Health America’s comprehensive resources and supportive strategies for both individuals and employers play a vital role in addressing mental health challenges in the workplace. By prioritizing mental health and fostering an inclusive environment, organizations can create a positive and supportive culture that enhances employee well-being and productivity.
Episode Transcript:
Kelly
I’m Kelly Callahan Poe from the Two Marketing Moms Podcast. Today we’re having our 36th episode and the episode is called Workplace Mental Health: Creating a Culture of Support with two special guests Taylor Adams and Khendra Lucas from Mental Health America. Welcome, Taylor and welcome Khendra.
Khendra & Taylor
Thank you so much for having us.
Kelly
We’re so happy to learn from you about mental health. Can you tell us a little bit about Mental Health America? And what led you to the organization, and what work you do now?
Khendra
Yeah, sure, I’ll start. So, for anyone who’s not familiar with Mental Health America (MHA), we are a national advocacy nonprofit that promotes a B4Stage4 Philosophy. So basically, we want to address mental health conditions in their symptoms and provide support as soon as they manifest. And we are a national office based in DC. But some of the staff like myself work remotely and speak about myself. I am teacher, Khendra Lucas, a research associate in middle America, and I’m based out of Memphis, Tennessee. So I helped to manage the operations for the Center for Research and Innovation, manage data from our screening program, which I’ll talk a little bit about later, and help to create content for resources after screening, which I’ll also talk a little bit more about.
But prior to MHA, I majored in biomedical sciences in Psych. And I did that in the hopes of becoming a doctor, which, as we can see, that didn’t work out. Around my senior year of college, I decided that that wasn’t the career path I want to take. And so, I ended up going straight into the nonprofit sector, I was just really interested in systemic issues and how they’re affecting everyday lives. And so, I got involved in some really rewarding work doing health screenings for low-income families, doing free income tax prep. I ended up running a free tax initiative, which was just way off from my degree. And I love taxes, people call me the tax lady now. I ended up doing a county-wide tax project. And while that work was fulfilling, and I loved it, it just wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. So, one day, I was scrolling LinkedIn, just looking at opportunities, and Mental Health America popped up. And it just really attracted me based on that B4Stage4 Philosophy. I was really interested in their interest in prevention, especially with youth. They’re prioritizing a lived experience, and just the fact that I was able to channel all of my special experiences into one position. At that time, Taylor knows this, but I do also have like an interest in workplace mental health. And I see my career path taking me along that route. And so, anytime I get a chance to collab with Taylor, I take it. She’s great, a mighty team of one, but she gets so much done, and I just admire her so much. But I don’t want to talk too much about her because she can do that. I’ll let her talk more about what she does. But she’s amazing.
Taylor
Oh, thank you. Actually, the most surprising thing was learning that you like her detoxes can be super helpful with this. Like, keep that in mind.
Kelly
We’re all going to be calling you now.
Taylor
Yeah, so my name is Taylor Adams. I work as the Director of Workplace Mental Health at Mental Health America. I guess try to convince organizations why mental health is so important to think about and prioritize what are the right types of policies, programs or interventions that they should be looking at to actually improve worker mental health outcomes. I did not ever expect to get into this type of work. I’ve been with MHA for six years now. But I’ve been working specifically on workplace mental health for three or four. And it was more just like this opportunity kind of opened up at MHA. And that’s something that’s really great about working at the organization. It’s very fluid. And you can kind of try new things and think big and experiment. And this was one of those things where they’re like, sure, take it take a stab, let’s see what happens. And we’ve really built out that program since and it wasn’t until I started doing these conversations and presenting and learning more about the topic that I was drawing parallels to when I was a student or young adult.
I’ve worked in nurseries, daycares, I’ve worked in fast food, restaurants and banking and all across the spectrum of different kind of industries, anything I can do just to learn, different things. And there were some really great job experiences and some really terrible ones. And I dealt with depression when I was in high school and just all the things that contributed to that came together in this position now and I see those relationships?
Kelly
Wonderful. Can you explain a little bit of what about what B4Stage4means? Just explain what that means in your terms, because it’s a campaign that you use. And I think people know that stage four means it’s really bad. So, what does before stage four for you guys?
Khendra
So, when you think about physical illnesses like cancer, and you think about the stages 1,2,3 and 4, and as a society, we tend to be more in tune with our physical health, like, yes, there’s still gaps there. And yes, we still need to figure out how to expand access to care. But when it comes to mental health, the scale is not the same. People don’t address these issues, or address depression as they would cancer. So, you go get a screening, you got to get a mammogram. But for mental health conditions, a lot of people are just not literate in what treatment is out there. And so, we want mental health conditions to be held in the same regard as physical. So, when we talk about before stage four, we want to think about prevention, we want to think about, okay, well, maybe we didn’t prevent it. But maybe somebody is in that early stage when they’re trying to figure out what’s wrong. We want to think about those people who are in that moderate stage one thing about people there that severe stage. And so, we want to get to those people, before their mental health symptoms start to manifest into something else, or to where they’re at the point where treatment is just not viable or not as easily as attainable. So that’s what we’re all about. Just that key prevention piece.
Kelly
That makes a lot of sense. Well, obviously, mental health has been top of mind since COVID. And can you talk a little bit about how COVID has impacted mental health in the workplace? And I think you may even have a lot of stats and figures on that as well?
Khendra
Yeah, sure. So, I’ll start. So, every year, the research team, releases a report called the State of Mental Health in America. And it’s exactly what you think we take data from every single state in DC and look at the prevalence of mental health conditions. And we found a lot of key things from this data. For example, one in five adults in America are experiencing mental health condition, and most of them are not receiving treatment. Two thirds of our youth with severe depression aren’t getting treatment. And probably the most disheartening stat from that report is that the ratio of individuals who are seeking treatment to the number of mental health providers is 350, to one so that means for every 30 or 50, individuals that need treatment, there’s only one mental health provider that can help them, which just really exposes that gap. And so, I love the State of Mental Health in America Report is very long, so I don’t want to get too much into it.
But another thing I like about the work that we do with MHA screening is that it provides a little bit more context, this is a little bit more to the story. So yeah, we’re able to see who has a mental health condition, but we might be losing sight it who might have not gotten diagnosed yet or who’s just not in the system, or those who just aren’t reflected in those numbers. So, people who come to our site, they are what we call help seeking. And so, they’re generally experiencing symptoms of some condition. They might not have a lot of mental health literacy, and they probably haven’t gotten diagnosed yet.
And so, these people come to our site, they voluntarily take the screening to try to get some answers and look for resources. And at a staggering about 75% of people who come to our site take a screener to see if they are at risk. And so, we been able to not only provide that resource for them and give them a stepping stone, but also channeled that information into valuable resources.
And since 2014, we’ve been servicing over 19 million people which is just wild. But touching on COVID — that really kind of inflated our numbers. If you think about it, you know, when the pandemic first started, everybody was quarantined, everybody was isolated, all you can do is just sit there, and your kind of just more aware of your thoughts, you’re more aware of your brain. And so, a lot of people are going on Google, say, I’m very, very sad, or I’m very, very lonely, what’s going on with me. And so ,we definitely saw a rise in depression screens, an exponential rise in anxiety, bipolar screens. And that trend has kind of stayed throughout the pandemic.
More interestingly, as we’re kind of adjusting to this new normal, we start to see a little bit more interesting ADHD, and it’s quickly become whatever, more popular screens. And so now we’re starting to see that our priorities and our thoughts are kind of shifting from I’m lonely to, okay, I’ve just been stuck in the house. And now I had to go out into society and be productive, I can’t pay attention, I can’t stay on task. So that’s been interesting to see. And another interesting stat I want to bring up because I don’t want to take up all the time.
But we also talked about our screeners, what are the top three main concerns that are affecting your mental health? And for a while loneliness, and isolation was number one, of course, it makes sense. We’re stuck in the house; we can’t talk to people. However, this past year, we’re also starting to see a shift, where people are now more focused on their body image or their sense of self, and their relationship dynamic. So again, we’re getting back outside, and then we’re being a little more productive now. And we’re adjusting, but there’s just been some semi-permanent or permanent damage that has just affected the way we do ourselves and the way we interact with people. And so, while things are starting to slow down, it’s in stagnate, that mental health crisis is still dire, we’re still we’re trying to think more about how, you know just being around tech all the time we’re overstimulated, we’re not able to focus or keep our attention as much.
We were stuck with ourselves the entire pandemic. So now all we can do is just sit there and analyze ourselves. And now our self-esteem has been affected. And we can interact as much as we want to before the pandemic. And even though school and work problems were not the number one issue, it was in the top five. And there are a lot of people still recording issues with schoolwork, especially youth. And so that might be a reflection of personal issues trickling into school at work, it might also just be a reflection of work stress, which I’m sure Taylor might have a little bit more insight on because I’m not well versed. So, if you like to go Taylor.
Kelly
Well, I just wanted to pop up on the screen for those that are watching on YouTube, what the mental health tests look like the screeners that you mentioned look like because there are so many of them, how many of them are there?
Khendra
So, there are 11, clinically validated screens, and Spanish screeners, and then one survey that’s self-injury survey, which is not clinically validated.
Kelly
And your number one screener is the depression?
Khendra
Yep. And so, when someone takes the depression test what happens when they get the results. So, they’ll either get a result that says like mild depression, moderate, moderate, severe, and then we’ll provide links to resources after that. So not just giving them a result. And they’d just be like, Okay, you’re done. But and I could talk more about our content later. But we have resources like articles, crisis centers, peer support lines that we try to provide to people just so that they can have a next step after screening or are in aren’t just stuck with that information.
Kelly
So, the mental health tests and all these screeners that we’re talking about, for a variety of mental health issues, they’re free, correct?
Khendra
They are absolutely free.
Kelly
Wonderful. Okay. Taylor, what are your thoughts?
Taylor
I don’t have as many interesting stats. But just to add a little bit more framing around that, specifically the workplace. I mean, mental health issues and health conditions have always existed. In a workplace context, it felt like there was a bit of a silver lining where the pandemic brought that to the forefront and really made it a priority for employers. But it was definitely like Khendra was saying a time where people were reevaluating life priorities. And for most, that’s not going to be worth being your number one. So, I think it was like the peak of the pandemic, it’s like 4.4 million people had resigned from their jobs because of all these life changes and shifts and adapting and pivots that people had to do. And we saw from our own work health survey that 78% of workers report, you know, that stress was affecting their mental health that this was leading to bigger mental health concerns like burnout, but even depression, anxiety, and other conditions. I think their positive impacts, not so much the pandemic itself, but the consequences of it, or how people responded, in addition to the negative, but we saw a shift in the way that people work, we saw a little bit more flexibility and that they could balance their life, in addition to work responsibilities, they can take care of elderly parents or take care of children or schedule therapy appointments during the weeks, they had more flexible flexibility in their work hours. So that’s something I hope to see continue, I hope people don’t go back to where we were before where everyone’s forced to come into the office, because it’s been working really well, for some people to have remote work options, flexible work, work arrangements, that sort of thing.
We also saw a lot of organizations increase the type and improve the benefits that they offer as it relates to mental health. So, adding number of Employee Assistance Program sessions that they could improve the quality of the health insurance plan that they offer. But then, you know, there’s also some things around more than negative are redefining what work life boundaries look. Like, here, this is actually technically about craft studio, which is awesome. There’s lots of my office, and it’s like, that’s a lot more challenging to manage than if I had a designated space like I did go into the office every day. So, it’s, you could leave. I never leave this place. It’s only to walk my dogs just fine. But I think overall, it’s the people entering the workforce, as some of these younger generations are coming into the workforce, there is now an expectation that a workplace has to pay attention to these issues, it’s no longer like a perk that they think about this, it has to be kind of integrated as part of an organization. So that’s, I think that’s a positive. Just positive outcome of the other end of this.
Kelly
Love it. So how can you recognize when work is affecting your mental health? And, and or how can a boss or a colleague support someone who they know is struggling? What would you recommend?
Taylor
So we do have printable postcards that has like actual, like 11 steps to talking to an employee with a mental health concern, so that people can kind of have it on hand, because you’re not really like turning to your phone, you know, sitting there doing research, and they’re things that focus on stress burnout, what is the difference between burnout and depression because those symptoms often look similar, how to have those more difficult conversations, but still keep that kind of sense of professionalism and not feel like you’re asking too much of someone. But stress often leads to larger mental health concerns when it’s a chronic when it’s unmanaged, when it is interfering with your daily activities, like you know, when you go home and get upset at the dog or anything else, your husband or it’s just affecting your behavior in ways that would have happened if it wasn’t from for the impact of that stress on you. It could affect you physically. So, any like major change in like habits or behaviors as a result of workplace stress, it’s a good indication that’s like, Okay, we need to take a step back and reevaluate how to manage this. And then if it goes on manage, so chronic stress can turn into burnout, which has very similar symptoms to depression, it’s, you’re emotionally exhausted, and exhausted in general, you have a reduced self-efficacy, so you’re just not motivated. You don’t have the confidence in yourself to get things done to the best of your ability. And then you become cynical, which is kind of your kiss of death for burnout because it’s really hard to come back From that, because it’s you start to harbor bad feelings towards your coworkers towards your project. And it may not even be about the project itself. It was just unmanaged stress from that just built up over time. Interesting. Yeah. And in terms of, so I’ll give like the very quick, you know, how to be a supportive colleague. I think everyone had a crash course in this because true, we did in these conversations over the pandemics and like we’re all suffering. But just it’s really, and this is for any context, not just a workplace, but asking open ended questions in a non-judgmental way, allowing the other person to share what’s comfortable for them, apply active listening skills. And I also like to include, keep in mind like, you’re like the emotional intelligence that you could apply to that situation, being compassionate for the person that you’re speaking with. It’s always good to validate their feelings like yeah, no, I understand that, you know, that’s really difficult to go through. And then especially in the in the workplace, it’s good to familiarize yourself with what is available in terms of support, but so that you can kind of direct them to what’s appropriate. So it could be, maybe you should talk to your manager about this, or you know, HR has this program where you can like, anonymously share something that you’re upset about, or whatever the example is, but just maybe have a couple go to support that you can share as well.
Kelly
And MHA is a pretty supportive environment, you have any unique space that I visited once, what is that? Tell me a little bit about that unique space? Or tell everyone about that unique space that you have that every office really should have? What is it?
Khendra
Since I work remote, I haven’t had enough experience in our little wellness room. But I know we just have like a nice little couch…
Kelly
I just thought it was called the Nap Room.
Khendra
I think it’s actually called the wellness room. You go in, you go in close the door, lay down a nap. It’s beautiful.
Kelly
I love it.
Khendra
It’s great to have those spaces where you can just “whoosh”. A lot of employers think they just have to be all work, work, work all the time. But they don’t realize that being able to allow your workers to just have a space where they can breathe, and just say no, I’m just going to take a break. And y’all see me in 10 minutes. But I got to go. And people being flexible and supportive of that, like, it does wonders for workers mental health, it does wonders for productivity, you would think it didn’t. But those little nuggets of just breathing room, like, make all the difference.
Kelly
I love it. I love it.
Taylor
It’s a hell of a lot better than crying in the bathroom at work. At least there’s a private space. Yeah, that’s pillows and cheese lounge. A little bit more cozy. But even in general, because we’ve had since switched to a I feel like a majority of us do work remotely. And before we were more close knit going into the office every day working remote on certain days. And I feel like MHA has done a really good job of trying to or trying to figure out a good system where people can work remotely have that flexibility, but then also stay socially connected, and kind of reduce some of that isolation because it be really challenging. I know Kendra, you joined us when we were already remote, and you just don’t have that same water cooler chat that you do going into an office every day. Yeah. I think they do a good job of trying to keep us having staff retreats. And we are required to come in certain times a year. And we have a lot of social events. And it’s, you know, half of its socialization and then half of its business and so that that’s an aspect of MHS culture I really appreciate and then adaptability to because we’ve all been trying to figure it out as we go. And that will continue till we die, I’m sure.
Kelly
Well, how can employers create a mentally healthy and supportive work environment?
Taylor
They can do a lot. There’s a lot of different things that contribute to better worker mental health outcomes. It does require investment, so Time Attendance, like intention, action from different levels of an organization. So not just leadership, not just your workers, not just middle management or your people managers, but everyone has a role and how they can help create that culture of support. Not just spreading awareness about mental health but making people feel good coming to work or making people just feel good in their daily interactions. I think a really big thing, especially if you’re a decision maker for an organization is having a Some something in place to measure and then having a response to employee feedback. That’s a lot often hear comments from organizations that say, Oh, well, we don’t really hear any feedback from employees, like, everything’s seems like it’s going fine. And it’s like, it may be a culture where people don’t feel safe to speak up. So maybe the measurement isn’t the tool isn’t there to get that feedback. But also, being responsive to that, because I think no one likes having to take a survey and then not seeing any of the results of that. Also, a really big piece is having fair and effective people management, we see that usually when people go up in their careers or their, their, their promote, and they take on more responsibility, they’ll take on a team, or they’ll take on hiring people. And without that, like extra support or training around like managing people is a very different skill set that maybe your previous job, but the work that you did is a program manager where you know, for example, so I mean, that’s, that’s one of the things they say is you just don’t leave bad jobs, you leave bad managers, it’s very, it’s really, really tied to mental health and how people feel and their experience at work. And there’s a ton of different things we could share, but creating an inclusive work environment.
For example, MHA really strives to have a workforce that are people with lived experience, because we’re a person first advocacy organization for mental health. A lot of us not, not everyone but has lived experience with mental health or substance use. And that’s something that as a as a culture, it feels really good to be able to, I mean, like we can talk about, like our therapy openly are we talking about, like, oh, I can’t find a therapist, they’re out of network or like these things that without having that, that that that culture of inclusion and feeling like they’re addressing those things, and being very intentional about it would be difficult, another work environment.
Kelly
What I love is that you guys clearly live, what you practice what you preach, I think, when I emailed one of you, I got a response back that someone was taking a mental health day, and it reminded me, okay, that’s vastly valid, and people should be brave enough to be able to say that. So, I thought that was impressive to be able to, to hear that, well, what sort of resources, we’ve talked about some of the resources that Mental Health America has to help both employees and employers, we showed them Mental Health America screenings, the 11, different screeners for depression, etc. What other types of tools can help the workplace?
Khendra
Yeah, I can talk a little bit more about our resources after screening. So, I touch a little bit on our articles. And so, we want to make sure that we are not only providing support, as far as like helping people figure out what might be going on with them, but also advancing mental health literacy. We want to make sure that we have articles that are accessible. So, we try to make our reading level as low as like fourth grade. And we try to make our titles so that people Google so you’ll see non-traditional titles, like “Am I crazy?”, or “I don’t want to go to therapy”, or “my family member doesn’t want to go to the hospital”. And we try to mold these articles and convey information in a way for people to understand. And we have so many of those. And we want to make sure that people you know, they see that they might have severe depression, and they’re like, “oh, okay, what’s depression”, we want to make sure that people are able to understand exactly what the condition is, and what support is out there for that specific condition. We also have a do-it-yourself tools that we’re pioneering. These are basically modules that kind of help people reframe their thoughts. So, somebody’s thinking, “Oh, I’m a failure, because I didn’t turn in my work project on time”. Maybe reframing that to say, “I’m not a failure, I just needed more time to complete the project, or it’s normal to miss a deadline”. So, kind of just taking that pressure off of yourself and creating a healthy mindset that’s based on like cognitive behavioral therapy techniques.
And we also have modules to help kind of destigmatize those conversations, especially related to substance use, because I think our stat is around 90% of people with substance use disorders don’t receive treatment, which is staggering. And so, we want to make sure that those specific people know that help is out there and it’s okay to talk about.
And then in addition to those, we also provide links to alternative resources. We’re really big on peer support, because the power of just being able to talk to somebody who you feel you can relate to, is important to destigmatizing, but also giving someone the initiative to go get help. You also do like warm lines. So, peer support lines, crisis lines, like nine, eight, therapy directories. And all of these are on mhascreening.org in that central location so that it’s easy to find.
We also have resources for organizations and schools that are looking to implement screening. So that can be as simple as just providing a link on your page, it may take screening, all the way up to just creating a whole curriculum surrounding mental health screening. And so, if anyone is interested in just implementing an organization wide type effort, those resources are also available,
Kelly
Wonderful. And Taylor, on the workplace side?
Taylor
And I just wanted to say the work that Khendra and her team do is just so awesome, I still can’t wrap my head around just all the stuff that they’ve managed to accomplish in a short amount of time. But I think what’s most striking about all of this is that it does take people I don’t know the exact numbers there, like up to 10 years for people to find treatment after having symptoms, you know, come on for a mental health condition 10 years, it’s like, if you were to like break a toe, you’re not going to get that help and what I But what’s even more fascinating, it’s like people, they aren’t likely to just go straight to the mental health professional, the provider, maybe they don’t have access, maybe they can’t afford it, there’s so many barriers, even if you do, you know, go forward with treatment, that putting something in place like peer support, do it yourself tools, and some of these other things, just providing more information, feeling more comfortable to subject. I’m like, there’s a piece of me that’s like, it took me probably eight years to like, experiencing that all the symptoms to actually getting the right treatment. And there’s just people that wish this program existed, like trying to navigate, you know, my own mental health journey. Anyway, so just kudos to control your teams are amazing. So, in terms of some of the resources we have, specific to the workplace, so we do have a workplace morale toolkit, creating, creating a culture of support and well-being. I realized after the fact that some of the feedback, we’ve gotten that there were so much content in there that people have actually broken it up and done like monthly campaigns using the information, which is a good a good problem to have. But there’s resources for executive leadership for your people, managers, human resources, workers, who are mental health advocates within their workplace, those champions, ambassadors, everything from how do we create that supportive workplace culture two tips to planning a wellness spend to those printable things I mentioned earlier with tips on talking to someone with a mental health concern.
So, we permanently had been working in research before I came into this role. So, we have a decade or so of that under our belt. And we started taking what we learned from that and creating a framework for what, what’s a mentally healthy workplace look like?
What actually drives good mental health outcomes? So, we developed a Bell Seal for Workplace Mental Health, which it’s an employer recognition program, but it’s also parts. Some of the folks that we work with have called it a workplace policy audit, which anytime we hear the word audit, I’m like, oh, yeah, oh, no, that’s never a good thing. But in a way, they’re like, Yeah, this is very thorough, and looking at different aspects that contribute to workplace mental health.
Kelly
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Kendra, and Taylor, you guys have been a wealth of information. And I will, of course, add links to our website twomarketingmoms.com to Mental Health America, and also in our social, we’re going to be showing all of these resources in our social media when we promote this podcast. So, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about what about mental health in the workplace. And thanks for all of your guidance.
Khendra
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for making space on your platform because this is a very important issue. It’s just not talked about enough so we appreciate your time.
Mental Health America Resources
The State of Mental Health in America Report
The Bell Seal for Workplace Mental Health
https://twitter.com/mentalhealtham Hashtag #B4Stage4
