Making mental health as high a priority as physical health

.

Mental health affects physical health

We’re all aware of the impact of nutrition and exercise on our physical health, but do we give our mental wellbeing the same care and attention? Honest answer: No. Not yet.

Often we neglect the reciprocal relationship between mental and physical health. They work in tandem, directly influencing each other; improving physical health can have hugely positive results on mental health and vice versa.

However, this also means that disregarding our mental health can have negative impacts on physical health: emotional distress triggers a cascade of physiological responses throughout our body, including the release of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which in turn contribute to the development of physical health conditions (e.g., cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, stroke).

And it's not just the physiological response that can impact our health…mental health conditions often lead to changes in behaviour, such as poor sleeping patterns, lack of physical activity, or unhealthy eating habits, all of which also have a negative effect on our physical health. 

Yet fewer people have the skills, knowledge and self-awareness to understand and look after their mental wellbeing compared to their physical wellbeing. With nutrition and exercise, we have well-established societal norms around physical wellbeing. There are no such societal norms established yet for mental wellbeing, around which there is still much public stigma, and therefore many people are not sure what to do, or are reluctant, to correct any mental health issues as they appear.

Mental Health and the Workplace

Largely due to stigma around mental health issues and a lack of established societal norms, poor mental health is not only costly at a human level (employee suffering), but also very costly in the financial sense. The latest figures from Deloitte estimate the cost of poor employee mental health to UK organisations at a staggering £56bn per year. And it has also been shown that employees will often wait until their issue is fairly acute before seeking any help, at which point the business has already absorbed about 80% of the cost of poor mental health (through presenteeism and absence).

It is beneficial for both the employee and employer then to tackle mental health stigma and build better mental health across their organisation:

1. Good mental health fosters happier and healthier relationships, inside and outside of work

2. People who have good mental health are generally more productive

Questions and actions for all of us:

1. Are we aware of the mental wellbeing support services available to us through our employers (if any are indeed offered)?

2. As a general goal we’re advised to do a minimum 30 minutes of physical exercise every day. Alongside this, try to set aside 30 minutes each day for mental health exercises (listening to calming music, reading, self-reflection activities, journalling, meditiation, yoga, deep breathing exercises, to name just a few). No need to strap on your running trainers or hit the gym - this can all be done from home! Note the difference in your overall mood after 2 weeks.

   (See our range of self-care articles and exercises to boost mental health)

Questions for HR and business leaders:

1. What KPIs do you have in place to measure the success of your wellbeing initiatives? Are they connected to business performance KPIs and/or your people data (absence, turnover, reviews, pay grades etc.)?

2. How do you promote wellbeing services among your harder-to-reach staff? Often having champions on the ground along with support and personal stories from senior management can have a huge impact, particularly in breaking the stigma around asking for support and utilising the support services on offer.

3. Do you make team wellbeing part of management performance criteria, i.e., are bonuses tied to the wellbeing of your staff?

4. How do you get wellbeing feedback into managerial decision making so processes and expectations align with your wellbeing strategy?

How we can help…

At 87% we believe in measurement when it comes to mental health. Just like you can’t record physical weight loss without first stepping on the scales, you cannot know where to start, nor are you able to properly track progress, with your wellbeing strategy and initiatives without prior measurement.

With our Employee Wellbeing Platform, we help organisations to measure the wellbeing of all their people, with a focus on real, tangible data from self-assessment:

• We provide a way for employees to understand their current mental wellbeing and give them guidance on where to focus. Personalised, actionable reports would signpost to existing mental health support services available inside and/or outside ther organisation

• We provide the organisation with a way to measure the real-time health of all their staff and to measure change over time

• We highlight areas and audiences to focus on when promoting wellbeing initiatives so the communications are targeted and relevant

• We allow wellbeing to be tied into KPIs with correlations possible over time

• We compare team wellbeing to motivate managers to be more involved and to actively promote wellbeing across their team(s)

Watch our quick 3-minute demo video or book your free personal demo with us to understand how we can help you.