Mental health is a minefield for CEOs to deal with.
{Disclaimer – I am not a mental health professional. Someone will likely tell me that this post is irresponsible. But it comes from real conversations with real CEOs dealing with real people. It also comes from genuine concern that our resilience and ability to grow through adversity (“antifragility” to quote Naseem Taleb) are on the decline precisely when we need them most to face bigger responsibilities individually as we grow, and collectively as we need to change course.}
Caveat done – here we go…
We’re at, or nearly at, the pinnacle of the mental health hype cycle.
Or at least I hope so.
Mental health is at least as important as physical health. But because it isn’t as easily calibrated – because we’ve not equipped people to tell the difference between a stressful incident and a mental health problem – we’re running the risk of labelling anything unpleasant or stressful as a mental health issue.
And that will disempower us from dealing with the real challenges we face.
I read a brilliant article in the FT recently about the cohort of kids who have been going through COVID at critical examination time at school. Lucy Kellaway writes “One day I found myself telling the class that anxiety was a useful and necessary thing and, in any case, exams were meant to make them anxious. As I spoke, a chill went around the room. I felt cast as that most unattractive of things: a mental health denier.”
Peter Fonagy, CEO of the Anna Freud Centre, which offers treatment, training and research on child mental illness goes on to add “There are the students who are mentally ill who need help. And there are the students who are having a rotten time, are not coping well and who have diagnosed themselves as being unwell.”
For students, read employees.
Mental health is a real issue. We have a long way to go in understanding it well and being able to provide adequate support for those suffering poor mental health.
But if we allow people to call everything a mental health issue – a stressful assignment, difficult conversations, a challenging phase at work – then we not only rob ourselves of the growth through manageable stress, but we belittle genuine mental health issues and reduce our ability to support those who need it most.
We need to get to a place where genuine mental health issues are recognised, and support is given for those suffering them, while at the same time recognising that sometime we have to give and receive hard / challenging / stressful work.
And that some stress is not only good, but essential if we’re to grow and tackle bigger problems.
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