WORKPLACE MENTAL HEALTH: WHY MEDITATION APPS & ON-DEMAND THERAPY WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH
A BREAKING POINT
Five years ago, I walked away from a thriving career in commercial real estate at an industry-leading global firm. The year before, I had been promoted to a highly visible position in my region with great opportunities for upward mobility. In the year leading up to that promotion, I was diagnosed with PCOS, infertility, hypothyroidism and spinal osteoarthritis, had back surgery that took two years to recover from, and watched my parents’ thirty-five-year marriage fall apart as I myself got married. The stress of all the challenges and changes in my personal and professional life led to anxiety and depressive episodes worse than anything I had experienced in my adult life, as well as an eating disorder relapse.
I needed support. I needed tools and resources to navigate what I was going through. I needed to know I wasn’t alone. Even though I spent far more time at work than I did anywhere else, and my mental and physical health issues were undoubtedly impacting my productivity and performance, turning to trusted peers, my boss or HR didn’t feel like an option. I was ashamed and afraid to tell the truth. I didn’t believe it was appropriate to bring my problems across that threshold and I feared how I would be perceived if people knew how much I was struggling. Despite eight and a half years at the company, I was also completely unaware of any well-being or mental health resources or accommodations they might offer to support me. In the end, I assumed it was impossible to nurture my mental and physical health and a successful career at that company, so instead of speaking up and asking for help, I walked away.
A COMPLEX AND COSTLY CHALLENGE
It’s been just over five years since I quit, and since then, I’ve built a career around making people feel less ashamed and alone and more empowered on their health journeys. In trying to be a source of the hope and support I so desperately needed back then, through corporate wellness consulting, 1:1 coaching, and mental and women’s health advocacy work, I’ve learned so much. Perhaps most importantly, I’ve discovered my story is not unique. By 2019, it was estimated that 1 in 4 Americans experience some form of mental illness in a given year. With COVID-19 and recent civil unrest, it’s estimated that in 2020, as many as 1 in 2 adult Americans will struggle with their mental health.
The effects of this on the workplace extend far beyond my personal story. Mental health and chronic stress have profound impacts on employee morale, productivity and attrition rates, and the direct and indirect healthcare costs are staggering. A 2019 WHO-led study estimated that depression and anxiety disorders alone cost the global economy US $1 trillion each year in lost productivity. And that was before 2020 happened.
To say that the combined effects of a global pandemic and coming to terms with centuries of racial injustice (and figuring out what comes next) adds complex layers of mental health challenges at home and in the workplace is an understatement. Balancing homeschooling, caring for elderly family members, household duties and full-time work is physically and emotionally exhausting, even for the most resilient people. Add grappling with the psychological effects of unprecedented public health, economic and social crises, and we find our country and our workforce in an extraordinarily precarious situation.
How do we tackle the deeply complex issue of workplace mental health now that it is more complex and more important than ever?
INADEQUATE SOLUTIONS
In the past five years, and increasingly in the past five months, many employers are addressing the impacts of mental health and chronic stress in the workplace through comprehensive well-being platforms that include everything from revamped employee assistance programs to therapy apps to free counseling or weekly meditation sessions and webinars. Yet statistics indicate that even the most progressive approaches are woefully inadequate.
As of 2019, national utilization rates of mental health and well-being resources remained disproportionately low: an abysmal 3-5% of the American workforce leverages available employee assistance programs (EAPs), while a 17% utilization rate of a digital mental health solution is considered an anomaly to celebrate. With utilization rates so low and mental illness rates higher than ever, it’s safe to assume those staggering effects on morale, productivity, attrition rates, direct and indirect healthcare costs (and company profits) remain unmitigated.
So the bigger question is, why are so few employees actually using these (often free or subsidized) resources, when mental health statistics tell us that far more of them really need them?
THE PRICE OF STIGMA
Over the past three months, in between pouring over countless workplace mental health reports (see below sources), I’ve surveyed employees from over twenty companies across the country. Their stories have confirmed a hypothesis that began forming when I walked away from my previous career 5 years ago: employees are unlikely to speak up, ask for help and leverage company resources if they believe admitting they are struggling will yield negative consequences in how they are perceived or treated, and in what kind of opportunities they will be granted. In other words, a company can offer the most comprehensive well-being platform in the world, but it will be effectively useless to the majority of its workforce as long as intolerance and stigma persist.
Companies have to change the culture around mental health and chronic stress in the workplace if they ever hope to see a statistically significant impact on their employees’ mental health, and therefore their bottom line.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
The confirmation of my initial hypothesis is unfortunately only the tip of the iceberg. My research and interviews revealed four common, pervasive hurdles to effectively addressing workplace mental health:
Stigma-ridden cultures lacking psychological safety
Diversity and inclusion programs that fail to address the challenges that exist at the intersection of marginalization and mental health
Ineffective internal communication strategies (too few employees are even aware of what is available to them)
Lack of training for HR employees and managers (which results in broken response protocols)
We will fail to make meaningful, lasting changes across the workplace mental health landscape until we address the above. We must normalize a more open, honest narrative around mental health and chronic stress in the workplace, and increase awareness, compassion and tolerance along the way. Doing so will require new forms of communication, education and training at every level of an organization. It will also require advocacy, courage and vulnerability and at every level of an organization.
Now more than ever, it is imperative that companies create cultures where employees have the awareness, language and psychological safety to speak up, ask for help and leverage the mental health and well-being resources available to them. Changing the culture and communication around mental health won’t just increase utilization of mental health benefits, wellness programs and preventative measures. It will increase productivity, job satisfaction and sense of community within the organization, while decreasing attrition rates, absenteeism, presenteeism, organizational risk and disruption to teams. Perhaps most importantly, it will also give employees the tools, resources and support they need to survive one of the most challenging years in our country’s history.
SOURCES
American Psychiatric Association Foundation Center for Workplace Mental Health
Mental Health America
National Alliance on Mental Illness
American Heart Association (Mental Health: A Workforce Crisis )
Center for Disease Control
National Council for Behavioral Health