As a business it is standard practice to invest and commit to your team’s health and safety on a physical level to ensure their physical safety in the workplace. Many companies also provide well being incentives such as cycle to work schemes or corporate gym memberships to encourage a healthy lifestyle, but what you do to support your team’s mental health?

When someone says the words ‘mental health’ do you imagine people walking along the street talking to themselves or do you recoil in to a corner of the room not wanting to talk about the subject for fear of saying the wrong thing or feeling awkward?

‘‘Mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community’’ (World Health Organisation 2014)

And here we find ourselves in 2020 living in the most openly diverse culture that we have known to date and still there is a stigma attached to mental health!  A sad truth is that many people who are suffering from mental health do not get the treatment they need or that treatment is delayed which can mean prolonged suffering.

Here at Pentagon we recognise our responsibility to support our team with both their Physical and Mental Well-being.  If your staff are not operating at their best and feeling supported on a day to day basis where does that leave your business?

Our Communications Manager, Gabby Day has recently qualified as a Mental Health First Aider. Following successful completion of the training delivered by MHFA England our organisation is now far better equipped to support our team on this sensitive and essential level.

Mental heath comes in many different forms, more commonly we think of anxiety and depression, but the net is cast far wider than this.  The MHFA course highlights the wide range of issues such as addiction, disordered eating, self-harm, suicide, and psychosis.  The signs of a person suffering from any of these illnesses is not always easy to spot as symptoms are not often apparent on a physical level or they are being purposely disguised.

If one of your team was living with any one of these illnesses would you know how best to support them or how to assist them in sourcing and obtaining the relevant professional help?  For many I am guessing that would be a no.  

We are all navigating difficult situations with much uncertainty ahead.  Now more than ever it is so important for employers to become better equipped and more knowledgeable about mental health.

It takes a strong person to ask for help and a trained person has more chance of seeing it early!

Mental Health, we all have it…..