3 Ways to Promote Mental Health Inclusion in the Workplace

While May marks Mental Health Awareness Month (or Mental Health Awareness Week, depending on where you live), I’d say that over the last year mental health inclusion has been on my mind non-stop. This is due to a few reasons – my own journey in managing work-related stress and experiencing diminished mental health due to COVID and the racial injustice crisis, consistently hearing from clients about how underequipped they feel to address mental health inclusion in their workplaces and the staggering data about the sharp incline in mental health challenges being experienced by people everywhere.

Two years ago now, I co-facilitated bci’s first Breaking Barriers speaking event about mental health inclusion with our resident mental health inclusion expert Komal Bhasin (pictured above, who is also my fab sister!). In this workshop, Komal and I did a deep dive into what to say in order to hold inclusive mental health conversations in the workplace, emphasizing that leaders must do a better job of normalizing conversations around mental health challenges and be more inclusive in how they behave in order to interrupt mental health biases.

At that time, Komal and I knew we were on to something in pushing the dialogue about mental health inclusion, but we certainly couldn’t have predicted what was to come.

Flash forward to where we are now, more than a year into a global pandemic and nearly a year into a game-changing racial justice movement — both of which are taking a huge toll on people’s mental health. I’m sure that you’ve noticed that mental health, burnout and wellness are very common areas for discussion in the workplace right now.

Although more and more organizations are looking to incorporate inclusive mental health strategies into their DEI efforts, we’re still repeatedly hearing that more guidance is needed on how to make this happen. We’re also hearing from leaders about how they can be more inclusive as it relates to mental health, on an individual level.

So to both these ends, I wanted to highlight three things you can be doing to cultivate mental health inclusion:

1. Learn the appropriate language required to engage in supportive and inclusive conversations about mental health in the workplace. Download bci’s free tip sheet to learn language you can put to use right away.
   
   
2. Directly name the mental health biases that permeate your organizational culture. Without naming the specific biases, it will be very difficult to interrupt them. Watch this video to hear Komal explain why so many people hold biases towards those who have experienced mental health difficulties.
   
   
3. Prioritize creating an organizational culture that supports the mental health of all team members, by offering a range of mental health training and learning opportunities. Training is fundamental for shifting your organizational culture to an environment where team members feel supported and safe sharing their experiences.

As part of bci’s commitment to mental health inclusion, we’ve created several new workshops to provide ground-breaking tools and strategies to help support your organization’s mental health inclusion efforts. If you’re interested in hearing more about our mental health programming, please email silvia@bhasinconsulting.com.

Finally, I encourage you to be proactive and vocal about your mental health inclusion efforts in the workplace, and I hope that you’ll continue your advocacy all year long. It’s key for interrupting the stigma around mental health challenges, which will benefit us all as we move forward from this difficult moment.