Post No.: 0653
Furrywisepuppy says:
When it comes to our mental health – the workplace environment matters too because most people spend a substantial portion of their lives at work. Work can be a major source of mental health problems, from issues such as poor workplace conditions, poor treatment and long commutes. High work overload, job unsuitability, employment insecurity, psychological demand, and low decision latitude, can all increase the risk of clinical depression and heart attacks.
And because mental health problems are often hidden (as in not externally obvious like a broken arm), many people deny themselves the reasons to take a rest from their jobs because they realise that onlookers will think that they have no good reason to take a temporary break for they lack any outwardly visible signs that they can’t continue working. In any context in general – we perpetrate too many misjudgements simply because we judge too much from outside appearances.
You can be tenacious and go to work even when ill, but your productivity, quality of work and performance levels will be low. You might make costly or dangerous errors in terms of money or lives, you won’t be good company for your colleagues, and the time it’ll take until you’re well again will be prolonged. (We’ve also learned now that if you have something like a virus then it could be contagious hence it’d be inconsiderate, rather than praiseworthy of one’s fighting spirit, to come to the workplace because you could spread it onto others. It’s sensible, from what we should’ve learnt from this COVID-19 pandemic now that, if you are ill with a contagious virus then don’t visit anybody outside of your own household, or if someone else is ill with a contagious virus then don’t visit them; unless it’s unavoidable or an emergency. We can go back to our hometowns and spread that virus there even if we ourselves are asymptomatic. We need to weigh up having drinks at Number 10 today with seeing our grandchildren grow up tomorrow(!))
But when workplaces accept mental health problems as being real health problems and account for them (e.g. by allowing sick days to be used for mental health reasons too) then people will feel less stigma and will ultimately do better work.
It’s also progress to see top athletes like tennis player Naomi Osaka and gymnast Simone Biles – who are highly decorated and therefore unquestionably know how to win – demonstrate their knowledge, experience and strength by acknowledging when they need to take a break due to mental health concerns. Athletes can now show that they’re human like the rest by talking about their mental health, which is something that athletes had to try to keep private, hidden and silent about in the past otherwise they’d be criticised for ruining their ‘super human’ image and appearing ‘weak’. But there’s still much room for improvement. Just as of posting, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics has finished, and we hope that figure skater Kamila Valieva, and others, are receiving the best care. Winning cannot come at all costs, whether they’re mental, physical, financial or reputational. There’s more to life than competition. It can be gratifying to go through pain and fear – as long as it’s aligned with your own purpose and the choice is un-coerced and yours. Woof!
The boxer Tyson Fury (an honorary Tyson Furry!) is also an inspirational example of someone who’s experienced acute personal mental hell, taken time out, but then came back stronger and ended up as a world champion again! For those who still underestimate depression – it was the thing that nearly killed him as he contemplated suicide; not the physical training as an elite athlete, not other boxers, not anything else so far. So don’t call him or anyone else who admits to depression as weak. You’re lucky if you’ve never felt like ending your own life to escape the pain. Some people’s assumptions when they see or hear someone else trying to talk about their pains is ‘I’m strong and they’re just weak’ but it’d be wiser to think ‘I don’t think I’ve ever experienced what you’re going through right now but by the looks or sounds of it I reckon it must be serious’. So if someone like him can openly talk about his depression and empathise with others who do too, then anyone else who’s going through depression should find the confidence to open up too, and whoever they speak to should listen and understand. And given the right and patient support – anyone who suffers from depression can make a grand comeback too!
In a traditional office workplace environment – natural objects, like plants, change and grow and so are more interesting than being surrounded by inanimate objects. They also need care and so remind us of the duty to care. Light, curves and colour are generally more pleasant than darkness, too many harsh angles or blandness.
The home can be one’s workplace too, and work can include raising children. And having to look after children under the age of 6 can be highly stressful due to the strain of looking after kids who won’t eat, stay away from dangers, sleep soundly and so forth. Single parents are therefore at a higher risk of poorer mental health due to receiving less functional and emotional support, as well as because they may face a greater struggle when it comes to paying for childcare. Work life, family life and transitioning to a new life stage (which might include moving home or facing new responsibilities) can all present particular mental health challenges, and multiple challenges can meet simultaneously if your time at work and at home overlaps.
Having your home as your workplace presents its own pros and cons, and suits some jobs better than others. It’s recommended to compartmentalise your work life and home life via spaces and rituals – you’ll ideally have a dedicated room just for working in, or at least utilise rituals to get you into and out of ‘work mode’, such as taking a walk around the block after breakfast before coming back in to start your work; and then completely shutting down your computer, tidying up your desk and locking up this room at the end of the day. You could dress one way when in ‘work mode’ and dress another way when out of it.
A regular routine is important – you’ve got to stick to your working hours and communicate the hours when you’re available to others. And others need to respect this rather than assume that you should be attentionally available just because you are physically nearby (except obviously for emergencies). Since COVID-19 and the sudden increase in numbers of people who started remote working, there’s more empathy and respect for those who work from home nowadays – but not long before that, many people who commuted to an external workplace didn’t even believe that people were ‘actually working’ if they worked from home, even though the Internet and video calls and conferences were already a thing! You may have been constantly interrupted or distracted by others asking for favours during your working hours because you ‘can’t be that busy’ or you’re more flexible because you’re able to work from home. I guess it’s like empathising with mental health conditions like depression, anxiety and schizophrenia themselves – lots of people didn’t believe these disorders really existed until more and more people opened up about their private experiences, to the point that one would be in the clear minority if one still believes they’re pretend illnesses, even if one has never personally experienced them firsthand.
Enforce regular breaks to get up from your desk. You may want to find ways to combat loneliness too, like meeting up with friends straight after work, or keeping in touch with colleagues throughout the day about the work (although some people can do this a bit too much as they want to constantly be seen to be working amongst their group).
You’ll avoid a regular commute though. Commuting can be horrendous for one’s stress levels when one is constantly stuck in traffic jams or is reliant on unreliable public transport. Commuting in itself isn’t time productively doing any work (few jobs consequently pay employees for their time commuting) yet it feels like work, or sometimes worse. So remote working can reduce some stresses (and overheads) because one doesn’t need to commute, and it may bring environmental benefits too.
Wherever one’s workplace is, sleep deprivation, due to being overworked – whether voluntarily or coerced into long employment hours – is bi-directionally causal with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and paranoia. Even just a few consecutive nights of poor sleep can have a notable negative effect on one’s mind.
Unemployment and having no money is in many ways even more stressful and can cause sleepless nights. It has always been ignorant to lack empathy or sympathy for the unemployed in general. Perhaps it’s because of the media and television programmes that picked on and sensationalised the extreme examples of benefits claimants (or alternatively glamorised rich heirs/heiresses who don’t need jobs at all)? The poor shouldn’t be victimised or homogenised. But, like the increased empathy for those whose workplace is also their home, the pandemic has made a lot more people understand that unemployment isn’t a pleasant feeling, as well as made more people accept that it’s okay to claim government support if one needs it to survive. (Wealthy corporations claimed it too!) But it’d be more preferable if people could learn to be more empathic through education without first needing to suffer from something firsthand because not all experiences will or can be shared, such as racism or menstruation.
Ethnic minorities – for the discrimination they can face in life – are more likely to experience insecure employment, and therefore financial problems, and therefore stress problems, and therefore mental health problems. Ethnic-minority members are more likely to be misdiagnosed, given medicines instead of talking therapies, and sectioned, compared to ethnic-majority members too.
The life stage of retirement can be a delicate time too, especially if it comes earlier than planned due to something like an injury or redundancy. Professional sportspeople’s careers are typically relatively short, thus they need to think about what they wish to do afterwards way before they reach that point. It’s not nice to feel past one’s best so soon and unable to compete with younger sportspeople at one’s game too. You’ve reached your peak – what now? Is it only downhill from here? When one has been used to winning all of the time – the only way to go is down, and that day will inevitably come.
People in general who’ve been extremely fit and have trained very hard since young to reach their absolute peak often risk depression soon after their peak physical years (which can be <20 years old for gymnasts and figure skaters) because they know and feel that their best days are behind them. Their best at 40 won’t be as good as their best when they were 25 or 30 years old perhaps.
So the key is to have one eye on another career path, a new chapter, with new and different ambitions or goals, once one approaches retirement from sport. One should however maintain a good level of physical activity. A good tip is to try new sports or physical challenges with therefore new targets that one has never attempted before – this way, one will still be psychologically setting personal bests even though one won’t be able to match the personal bests one could achieve in the activities one used to mainly do.
Woof! Please reply to the tweet linked to the Twitter comment button below to share ideas about how we can improve and better care for the mental health of employees in the workplace (whether we work from an external place of work and/or from home), of the unemployed, and of the prematurely retired.
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