At her in­au­gur­al speech a few days ago, the new pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, Dr San­di Arthur, in­di­cat­ed she would fo­cus on the men­tal well­ness of its mem­bers dur­ing her term. This is wise, as there is no doubt that health pro­fes­sion­als, as well as those on front­line du­ties like the emer­gency ser­vices, see and face a lot more in terms of trau­mat­ic and chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions than most of us will en­counter in our life­time.

But fo­cus­ing on men­tal well­ness, es­pe­cial­ly at work, isn’t vi­tal just for those per­form­ing these crit­i­cal roles; that should ap­ply to all of us. And, as Dr Arthur said in her speech, ‘the work­place is where many spend most of their ac­tive, alert hours,’ and that of­ten it per­me­ates oth­er mo­ments of our lives as ‘time is spent prepar­ing for work, think­ing about what has to be com­plet­ed at work, what one does not like at work, who one does not get along with at work, and it goes on and on’.

The good news is that we have come a long way al­ready in un­der­stand­ing the im­pact of men­tal health in the work­place, from a time when these is­sues were seen as some­one’s weak­ness or peo­ple fak­ing an ill­ness to avoid work. The rea­son for that was rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple: un­like phys­i­cal in­juries or ill­ness­es, men­tal ones can­not be seen, touched, or di­ag­nosed with some­thing more straight­for­ward like a blood test or an X-ray.

But they do ex­ist, and, thank­ful­ly, they are seen as more cred­i­ble to­day (and for the more cyn­i­cal out there, yes, some peo­ple may play fast and loose with men­tal health claims, but they are in the mi­nor­i­ty).

There are many good rea­sons why busi­ness­es ought to take men­tal well­ness se­ri­ous­ly and do what they can to sup­port their em­ploy­ees so that they avoid de­vel­op­ing ill­ness­es in the first place and, if re­quired, help them im­prove should they be fac­ing prob­lems. The most im­por­tant one is a le­gal and moral du­ty of care every em­ploy­er must em­brace: to look af­ter and sup­port, as rea­son­ably as pos­si­ble, every em­ploy­ee. And that in­cludes their men­tal well­ness, too.

But there is al­so an eco­nom­ic im­per­a­tive to be con­sid­ered. The most re­cent glob­al re­port on men­tal ill­ness at work, pub­lished by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion es­ti­mat­ed that about 12 bil­lion work­ing days are lost an­nu­al­ly due to de­pres­sion and anx­i­ety alone, cost­ing the glob­al econ­o­my US$1 tril­lion per year.

These fig­ures may be un­der­es­ti­mat­ing the size of the prob­lem, as they come from a re­port based on da­ta gath­ered be­fore the pan­dem­ic; a sep­a­rate WHO sur­vey found that de­pres­sion cas­es alone jumped 25 per cent glob­al­ly in 2020 and 2021.

Per­haps as ex­pect­ed, men­tal health is­sues af­fect dif­fer­ent sec­tors in dif­fer­ent ways. A re­cent sur­vey on men­tal health is­sues in the UK by De­loitte, the ac­count­ing and con­sul­tan­cy com­pa­ny, sug­gest­ed that men­tal health is­sues are es­pe­cial­ly high (and cost­ly) in Britain’s fi­nan­cial and in­sur­ance sec­tor, with over 75 per cent of em­ploy­ees show­ing signs of burnout (against an av­er­age of 63 per cent across oth­er in­dus­tries). The same sur­vey in­di­cat­ed that each em­ploy­ee with poor men­tal health costs the sec­tor over US$ 6,500 (about $45,000) per year.

And a re­cent study by Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty us­ing da­ta from re­cruit­ment web­sites in­deed seems to show a strong cor­re­la­tion be­tween staff well-be­ing and busi­ness per­for­mance. It cre­at­ed a sim­u­lat­ed port­fo­lio in­clud­ing the 100 busi­ness­es with the high­est well-be­ing re­sults from a sur­vey by In­deed cov­er­ing over 1,500 list­ed US com­pa­nies, with that port­fo­lio con­sis­tent­ly out­per­form­ing stock mar­ket in­dices.

So, the case for em­ploy­ers to take men­tal health is­sues se­ri­ous­ly is clear. But what can they do about them? To be­gin with, they must clear­ly demon­strate, from the top down, that the or­gan­i­sa­tion is se­ri­ous about men­tal well­ness, as to­ken ges­tures or emp­ty slo­gans can make things worse, not bet­ter. This means con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent work­place cul­ture and iden­ti­fy­ing im­prove­ments that can be made not on­ly in terms of how man­agers and staff in­ter­act but al­so how peers in­ter­act with each oth­er.

Part of this change of cul­ture al­so in­volves the de­vel­op­ment of a cli­mate in which em­ploy­ees (of all ranks) can open­ly talk about men­tal health is­sues with­out fear­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion or ridicule by col­leagues. This is even more pow­er­ful when com­ing from more se­nior staff. And, al­though there is an ex­pec­ta­tion that the more se­nior you are, the more re­silient you be­come, there is a lim­it to that—the ag­gres­sive way some union lead­ers en­gage with man­agers is of­ten shock­ing and would have been seen by them (right­ly) as un­ac­cept­able if the same man­agers spoke to them or to staff in that way.

To put it sim­ply: even in high­ly pres­sured sit­u­a­tions, a cul­ture of cour­tesy, po­lite­ness, and good man­ners can go a long way to­wards re­duc­ing stress and oth­er trig­gers for men­tal health is­sues. In fact, and like any oth­er health and safe­ty mat­ter, a pos­i­tive men­tal well-be­ing cul­ture should be dri­ven as a part­ner­ship be­tween man­agers, em­ploy­ees, and the lo­cal union branch (if ap­plic­a­ble) to en­sure it tru­ly beds in and gen­er­ates the pos­i­tive out­comes ex­pect­ed.

Just like with ‘phys­i­cal’ ill­ness­es, we will nev­er be able to elim­i­nate men­tal health is­sues in the work­place, but by ac­cept­ing it does ex­ist, by tak­ing it se­ri­ous­ly, and ac­tive­ly work­ing to­wards a bet­ter work en­vi­ron­ment that avoids trig­gers and ad­e­quate­ly sup­ports those fac­ing men­tal is­sues, we will go a long way to­wards re­duc­ing its in­ci­dence and its im­pact on in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es.

The old Latin say­ing that with a healthy mind comes a healthy body re­mains true. But what we are learn­ing is that healthy minds and healthy bod­ies lead to healthy busi­ness­es, too.