Why Workplace Mental Health Needs More Attention
1 in 2 employees reported having mental health disorders in 2014 and 2016
May was the Mental Health Awareness Month and a year down since the pandemic started, mental health remains one of the most urgent and sensitive topics in to-date. It is no secret that social isolation, fear and loss of loved ones during the pandemic only further deteriorated mental health well-being worldwide. This led to health authorities such as the CDC issuing guidelines on how to cope with stress.
One of the biggest areas where mental health has received more spotlight recently is workplaces. This was true before the pandemic and more so during the pandemic. Some companies have worked hard to ensure their employees feel safe to discuss and disclose their mental health in an effort to improve their working experience and company culture. Working remotely looks to have thrown a spanner in the works as it moved colleagues into isolated spaces and caused some to experience “Zoom Fatigue”.
Yes, the pandemic made matters worse. But it is important to understand that even before the pandemic, mental health problems such as anxiety, stress and depression at work places was widespread. I analyzed what were the workplace mental health trends before the pandemic, focusing on the tech industry. An industry which has been known to have serious mental health well-being issues for its employees. Using data sets from Open Source Mental Illness (OSMI) which surveyed respondents in 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
I analysed two major things:
1. How was the mental health status of employees in the tech industry before the pandemic?
2. What are some of the personal factors that can be used to predict the risk an employee has of developing/suffering from mental health disorders?
Employees were already struggling
In both surveys, over half of the respondents had identified to have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder (52.4% of the 2014 respondents while in 2016 it was 51.7%). This shows the severity of workplace mental health disorders and the need for employers to address it head on.
According to a report by the Health Care Cost Institute, between 2014 and 2018, the per-person spending on out-patient psychiatry in the US grew by 43 percent while spending on mental health admissions grew by 33 percent. Another research done in 2019 found that within the adult population in the United States, 1 in 10 had reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder. This figure went up to an estimated 4 in 10 adults during the pandemic.
The level of reported mental health disorders vary depending on the location. As these surveys were done in select countries, it was interesting to observe which of the countries had the highest share of respondents having mental health disorders.
65 percent of the respondents from Australia have been diagnosed with mental health disorders, the highest level in the surveyed countries. Germany had the lowest with 38 percent of their respondents.
Likelihood of Mental Health Disorders
Looking through the surveys, there are over 100 different questions that respondents voluntarily fill out. I selected a subset that I believe might help to determine the mental health of an employee. These are Age, Gender, Location, Remote work, Family history of mental illness and Race.
My analysis used Logistic Regression, Decision Tree and Random Forest techniques to predict the mental health well-being of respondents from the survey. The following observations stood out:
Gender: Respondents that identified as women were twice as likely to report mental health disorders as compared to respondents that identified men.
Family history: If a respondent has a family history of mental health disorders, their odds of also having mental health disorders increases by a factor of 2.7.
Remote work: Working remotely had no relationship to respondents being more or less likely to report mental health disorders.
Important to point out respondents (a total of 2,282 participants) to the survey submitted their responses voluntarily and I used that information to run my analysis. More information and full code can be found on my Github.
The Cost of Not Adressing Mental Health
Social stigma associated with mental health disorders and the difficulty to sought help from trained professionals due to lack of awareness and rising medical costs, makes it harder for people in need of help to get treated. A study found that 6 in 10 people with mood disorders and 7 in 10 people with anxiety disorders failed to receive medical attention due to the reasons mentioned earlier.
This impacts employees by increasing the rate of absenteeism, lowering their productivity and leading to most leaving their jobs. A recent survey of 1,500 employees in the US found that 60 percent felt their productivity at work was affected by their mental health. While over half had left their jobs due to stressful working conditions that negatively impacted their mental health. This can lead to significant losses to a company and overall economy. It costs employers in the United States 17 to 44 billion dollars ever year in the US to depression with over 200 million lost workdays.
If you are in a senior position, reading this and thinking your workplace is fine because no one has brought up mental health wellbeing, think again. Most workplaces are in a bubble where employees fake wellness in an effort to not lose their jobs or career paths, especially coming of an economically challenging year. Your colleagues might be smiling, showing up at work on time, never missing a meeting or social gathering, but behind it all is a fragile mental health on the brink of collapse.
Clearly the impact of mental health at the workplace affects more than just individual employees. It is time put mental health well-being at the forefront of organisations.
Way Forward
The pandemic has brought on nothing endless grief, gloom and pain. But just like the phoenix that burns to a painful death, this is an opportunity to rise from the ashes of the pandemic and reimagine workplace dynamics. Mental health support at the work place should not be something brought up only during the mental health awareness month for branding and social media clout.
It should be deeply engraved within the workplace culture, regardless of an employee’s position, background and demographic. We need to break the wheel and work to avoid the mental health crisis wave that is touted to follow after the pandemic.
We have seen a lot of companies embrace work from home models going forward and some adopt a 4-day work week. Employers need to dedicate more resources to lowering the risk of mental health disorder triggers at the workplace and solidify mental health at their workplace as a key cornerstone of their organisation and culture.
Normalize mental health conversations at the work place, offer special support and counsel to those in need, ensure mental well-being does not impact one’s career opportunities.
More workplaces need mental health services in place to be able to identify, accommodate and support employees suffering from mental disorders. Improving the well-being of employees not only improves a company’s brand and helps attract and retain talent, but it also improves employee, and subsequently the company’s, performance. It is estimated that improving mental health wellbeing at work can increase productivity by as much as 12 percent.
Global organisations such as the Center for Diseases and Control Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have long identified the perils of mental health disorders at the workplace. With the WHO even creating manuals to help employers and organisation to set up mental health wellbeing initiatives at their workplaces. It is time we realize workplace mental health wellbeing needs to take centre stage.
Let us reimagine how we deal with mental health wellbeing at workplaces
