This week, on Monday, 10th October marked World Mental Health Day; a day that aims to educate and raise awareness of mental health issues around the globe. With one in five people suffering from mental illnesses each year in Australia alone, it’s a major issue we’re all faced with, both at home and in the workplace. It’s important for individuals to recognise how to improve their own personal wellbeing, but it’s equally, if not more vital for organisations to understand how to detect mental illnesses in their employees and be able to support them through these challenging times.
Mental illness can come in many forms, but it generally affects the way you think, feel and behave. It distorts your normal perceptions of the world around you and decreases your ability to cope with, and bounce back from life’s many challenges.
The science of happiness
Renowned psychologist, Martin Seligman, theorised a scientific model of happiness, known as the PERMA model. It’s made up of five core elements that contribute to an individual’s overall wellbeing and positive mental state. These elements include:
Positive emotions – experiencing good thoughts and feelings of happiness, optimism and positivity.
Engagement – completely immersing yourself in an activity that allows you to feel present and in the moment, without realising the concept of time.
Relationships – having positive connections with people who lift your mood rather than deplete you of energy.
Meaning – feeling like you have purpose; like you’re part of something.
Accomplishment – achieving objectives and feeling a sense of forward progression.
When all of these elements are aligned and at their peak, an individual is known to be ‘flourishing’ which enables them to have a heightened resilience when faced with bumps in the road. From an organisational perspective, these factors are a good indicator of an individual or team’s overall happiness. If you don’t think they’re at an optimal level, these are the factors that need to be addressed to improve their wellbeing.
Identifying changes in character
It’s likely that you know someone in your organisation who has a mental illness or has suffered from one in the past, however, it generally goes unnoticed because of two factors. Firstly, it’s difficult to detect someone who has a mental issue, because it manifests differently in each person. And the second reason is that people with mental illnesses usually suffer in silence due to feelings of shame, pride and most of all, fear of judgement.
Mental issues are most commonly observed by changes in character. In a work setting, these signs are usually evident in a sudden dip in performance and/or productivity, fluctuations in personality and temperament, obvious physiological changes and frequent bouts of sickness or absenteeism.
Communication and support
There’s no quick solution to combating mental health disorders, however as an employer, it’s your role to simply be understanding and supportive of your employees throughout this difficult time. At EPS, we encourage regular communication within teams to enable a supportive environment for issues of this nature in the workplace.
Sometimes it can be as simple as reaching out and offering a listening ear to begin the road to recovery. So next time you notice someone you know is a bit out of sorts, you may like to ask them if they’re OK, and you might help them more than you think.
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