Why Mental Health at Work Matters Work plays a significant role in human life, providing us with the necessary means to support and fulfil our day-to-day responsibilities. Work allows individuals to meet their physical, social, and financial needs as well as proving a sense of worth, identity, and belonging.
On average an individual spends 1/3 of their lives at work, and more than 60% of the world’s population is currently at work. The context of work/life is interconnected and reciprocal in nature, and the workforce can be both a place of opportunity and risk for mental health.
Poor working environments, excessive workloads, under-paying jobs, job insecurity, lack of work opportunities for professional development and even wider issues such as discrimination, and inequality at work based on race, gender, religion, or disability generate work related stress which pose a risk to one’s mental and physical health, whilst further impacting on existing mental health conditions.
According to the World Health Organization (2022), an estimated 15% of working-age adults live with a mental disorder, and 12 billion workdays are lost each year due to depression and anxiety. Within the South African context an alarming rate of employee absenteeism costs the South African economy approximately R19-billion annually due to lost productivity (EAPSA, 2023). This influences job loss, financial instability, economic recession, and a high level of unemployment, prompting crime, unrest, and poverty in an already unequal society.
Understanding the interconnectedness of work/life is imperative, and reshaping our workforce to support this integration to future proof our organizations is vital. The workplace provides a key setting for work to become a protective factor for mental health. A platform to educate, address, promote, support, and act towards the assessment, mitigation, modification, and removal of workplace risks to mental health. Failure to do so amplifies mental health matters with an adverse impact on society.
By cultivating a culture of work that reduces the barriers towards mental health and implementing organizational interventions that directly target working conditions and environments, we create a workforce better able and equipped with the necessary skills to cope and overcome work-life demands and stressors. This cultivates a consistent level of wellness that creates high performance, good health, and profitable results. A healthy and inclusive working environment too promotes participation, fair employment opportunities, recovery, improved self-esteem, and better social functioning for those with severe mental health conditions. Overall, a healthy working environment contributes to better functioning human beings, their communities, and the larger societal context to which we belong and even lends to the combatting of wider Societal issues such as gender-based violence.
As we move forward together, post-pandemic, let us restructure our workforce and redefine work to support its most important asset, its people. Let us begin cultivating a culture that normalizes mental health at work, and let us build self-resilient and able human-beings. Let us use the workforce as a catalyst for positive change and together let us rehumanize the world of work. Mind Matters at work advocates for the inclusion of mental health at work, addressing the barriers that obstruct the cultivation of a healthy workforce and solutions that enable an environment for change. A happy and healthy workforce is the foundation for thriving organizations and healthier communities.
Sources: Employee Assistance Professional Association South Africa. (2023). “The state of mental health in South Africa”. EAPSA. https://www.eapasa.co.za/the-state-of-mental-health-in-south-africa Hillier, D., Fewell, F., Cann, W., & Shephard, V. (2005). Wellness at work: Enhancing the quality of our working lives. International Review of Psychiatry, 17(5), 419-431. World Health Organization. (2022). “Mental health at work”. WHO. https://www.who.int/newsroom/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-at-work
Author: Naseeba Hoosen
Naseeba Hoosen is an aspiring Industrial and Organizational Psychologist. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University of South Africa (UNISA) and a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).
Naseeba has a strong passion towards the re-humanization of the workforce with a focus on career development and wellbeing in the workplace, by providing individual, group and organizations development solutions to human capital challenges and advocating for the inclusion of mental health in the workplace. She has gained extensive experience within the NGO sector, applying a solutionist approach to real life challenges, creating, and coordinating meaningful campaigns which provided humanitarian relief, advocacy, research, and facilitation on social issues. In addition to this, Naseeba works closely with likeminded individuals in identifying gaps within an unequal society to create resourceful solutions that motivate, inspire, and educate youth in life skills and personal and professional leadership development to enhance their employability and become an agent of change.
Naseeba is committed to working in various settings and socio-economic contexts with the purpose of assisting individuals to make occupational, educational, and developmental choices to manage their career and lives.
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