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The Trillion-Dollar Taboo: Why It's Time To Stop Ignoring Mental Health at Work (ft.com) 221

Experts in workplace psychology overwhelmingly agree that burnout is a growing public health crisis. An excerpt from a long report: When the FT set out to investigate this issue, we asked readers to describe how their employers handle mental health issues, including stress, burnout, anxiety and depression. More than 450 people responded from 43 countries. Although they were a self-selecting group, their responses were significant: the majority felt unsupported, alienated or discriminated against on the basis of their mental health. Two-thirds believed their work had a somewhat to extremely negative effect on their health, and 44 per cent said they did not think mental health was taken seriously by their organisation. Half said they either didn't know where at work to go, or had nowhere to go if they needed support.

Even as many companies strengthen their policies to close the gender pay gap and end sexual harassment, mental wellbeing often remains an afterthought. "This is not about buying Fitbits for employees and teaching them deep breathing so we can pile on more work," says Donna Hardaker, a workplace mental health specialist at Sutter Health, a not-for-profit healthcare network. "You must address the micro and the macro. There is a deeply entrenched cultural idea that workplaces are fine; it's the employees who are the problem. But employers have a social responsibility to not be harming the people who are working within their walls."

A failure to support employees is also costing companies a fortune: an estimated 615 million people suffer from depression and anxiety and, according to a recent World Health Organisation study, this costs an estimated $1tn in lost productivity every year. Companies that do not have systems in place to support the wellbeing of their employees have higher turnover, lower productivity and higher healthcare costs, according to the American Psychological Association. They also face significant legal risks.

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The Trillion-Dollar Taboo: Why It's Time To Stop Ignoring Mental Health at Work

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    "Why it's time to stop X"

    "We need to all agree on Y"

    "No, Z isn't what you thought"

    These are good indicators of a waste of time.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    i would settle for somehow just sending those with the cold for flu home.
    why must they come to work when sick.
    why are these always the people who have no sick leave cause they use their sick leave when they are healthy to skip work, but then come in sick and infect everyone else

  • by Anonymous Coward

    ... my reasons for going postal! It's the American Way[tm]!

  • Time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geekymachoman ( 1261484 ) on Thursday July 11, 2019 @03:13PM (#58909758)
    It's time to stop ignoring bunch of things, but nobody cares.. so carry on.
  • by Dirk Becher ( 1061828 ) on Thursday July 11, 2019 @03:22PM (#58909808)

    because dying on the job is like stealing from the company."

  • by trybywrench ( 584843 ) on Thursday July 11, 2019 @03:34PM (#58909892)
    don't hire crazy people. That will fix the issue.
    • by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Thursday July 11, 2019 @03:40PM (#58909944)

      don't hire crazy people. That will fix the issue.

      You have apparently never worked in Academia or in an organization with high numbers of PHDs.

      • I have. People in companies are fucking nuts as well. Perhaps in different ways from, say, mathematicians, but no less nuts. All you do is choose the variety. World you prefer walnut or cashew?

      • Then who will deal with all the crazy customers or business partners?
      • don't hire crazy people. That will fix the issue.

        You have apparently never worked in Academia or in an organization with high numbers of PHDs.

        Or an HR department...

    • I wasn't crazy when they hired me.

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Not all crazy people are the same kind of crazy, some crazy works good and some crazy works really, really, bad. So mental health in the workplace, simply remove the greatest antagonist of mental health in the work place, simply test for psychopathy and exclude across the board. Healthy and happier workforce and those psychopaths wont be in a position to eat your company alive with corrupt work place practices. Creating strife, copying and selling company data, taking credit for other people's work, making

    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      don't hire crazy people. That will fix the issue.

      You mean never hire anyone? I hate to impugn my friends and acquaintances, but everyone's a least a little bit nuts. Actually, the most dangerous nuts are the ones who insist their perfectly sane.

      Me? I've merely compartmentalized my crazy bits where they might even do some good, especially against scamming spammers.

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      The other policies and work environment will soon enough make a fair portion of the once-sane hires crazy.

  • single payer healthcare is need so you can't lose it with your job. As then the only state Mental Health you can get is to something insane.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • You can have single payer health care or you can have mass immigration. You most certainly cannot have both.
    • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

      I agree. And, the single payer should be the one receiving the services.

  • You don't want people like this [nypost.com] blowing up in your bagel shop.
  • Even as many companies strengthen their policies to close the gender pay gap and end sexual harassment, mental wellbeing often remains an afterthought.

    What the ruckus is that supposed to mean?

    Oh the stone-age tyranny of keep it together, get your work done, and don't complain as devised by shepherds, seamen, fur traders, and hardy homesteaders who built this house on a code of daring, isolation, and self-reliance.

    [*] May include repression, alienation, and an early demise.

    The only way mental health counts a

    • by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      Corporations: As if our employees aren't already cynical enough about our corporate motives, let's add crawling right into our employee's psychological grills as a first-tier HR initiative (you know, since we've already knocked off the gender pay gap and ending sexual harassment years ahead of schedule, easy peasy).

      The personal *is* the political but to gasslight everyone they say it's just business.

  • Greg Bear wrote a novel titled / (written in catalogs as Slant, because Greg Bear was trolling harder than the artist formerly known as Prince) which revolves around the concept that working conditions will continue to degrade to the point that the majority of the population requires invasive nanomachine-driven thalmic rebalancing in order to continue to function. Except for a few people who can handle the stress, who are called "high naturals" and are much sought after by corporate employers.

    Also some int

    • Greg Bear wrote a novel titled / (written in catalogs as Slant, because Greg Bear was trolling harder than the artist formerly known as Prince) which revolves around the concept that working conditions will continue to degrade to the point that the majority of the population requires invasive nanomachine-driven thalmic rebalancing in order to continue to function. Except for a few people who can handle the stress, who are called "high naturals" and are much sought after by corporate employers.

      Thank you, it's such a pertinent book to bring into this conversation because of the messages in Slant about mental health. A fictional context provides enough detachment so that it can be discussed without triggering emotional memories in people that detaches them from the rational parts of thought.

      Spoiler Alert don't read on if you want to read the book.

      This book characterises a vector for mental illness to reach us all via technology. It discusses that our available intelligence is consumed by th

  • by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Thursday July 11, 2019 @04:13PM (#58910138)

    Anxiety and depression are serious conditions affecting a lot of people. It's not limited to work, though work can play a role. It's nice and simple to say "just suck it up" when you don't have these issues and can't relate.

    A good book on the topic is "On Edge: A Journey Through Anxiety"
    https://www.amazon.com/Edge-Jo... [amazon.com]

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      The problem with The Truth is that there is so much out of out there. People latch onto a tiny bit of it and turn it into an answer for everything.

      It's absolutely true that resilience and determination are wonderful traits. They aren't, however, the answer to every problem.

  • Clearly, just being reasonable and perhaps even nice to employees for no return would be too much to expect... however, making them superficially happy will mean more productivity and longer careers!
  • Were the responding employees depressed/anxious before they took their current jobs? What if it has nothing at all to do with work? Maybe the problem is where they live - https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

    Maybe it's something else. All we have to connect it to work is a self-selected survey that could be showing only that the respondents had pre-existing mood disorders.

Perfection is acheived only on the point of collapse. - C. N. Parkinson

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