Mental Health News

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Mental health issues can be really upsetting for anyone, but it’s also upsetting for those people you work with.  It seems that many workplaces and employees are ill suited to recognize and deal with mental health problems such as anxiety and depression on the job.  Mental health works educator George Goldie has states that, ““In workplaces the most stressful things are not the chores and tasks we have, but the people we work with.�

In Canada, it’s estimated that about 20% of Canadians will end up being diagnosed with a mental health problem in their lifetimes.  Of those people about two thirds will seek out treatment for their condition and of that two thirds only one third will find the appropriate treatment for their unique case and mental health problem. 

Mental health problems can really affect people in the workplace.  They account for absenteeism, low productivity, and even account for discrimination when someone is experiencing problems and their co-workers aren’t trained to handle the issues.  We have all had a ‘difficult’ person that we worked with on the job.  However, not everyone understands that someone who is difficult to get along with, may actually be suffering from mental health problems, whether they are seeking treatment or not. 

Many of the symptoms of anxiety and depression can make a co-worker hard to work with; fatigue, nervousness, mood swings, and bouts of anger, lack of interest in the job or work, and just being a downer to be around.  However, these individuals are trying to make life hard for their co-workers and employers.  They are simply dealing with a valid health condition. 

In Canada, an effort is being made to train managers, supervisors and employees in how to handle mental health issues in their employees.  The Mental Health Works training workshops teach these groups the proper management that is requires under various accommodation laws in Canada. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 4:18 am and is filed under Mental Health, Depression, Anxiety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.