May is recognized as Mental Health Month and ReMA has gathered a variety of resources that can help members and their employees create and maintain a culture of well-being in the workplace. Mental health is an important component of overall well-being and is equally as vital as physical health for all employees. Mental health concerns due to work can adversely impact an employee’s social interactions, productivity, performance, and absenteeism.
Mental Health America (MHA) has released their annual Mental Health Toolkit that provides practical advice including:
- While 1 in 5 people will experience a mental illness during their lifetime, everyone faces challenges in life that can impact their mental health.
- Knowing when to turn to friends, family, and co-workers when you are struggling with life’s challenges can help improve your mental health.
- One way to check in with yourself is to take a mental health screen at this link. It’s a quick, free, and private way for someone to assess personal their mental health and recognize signs of mental health problems.
- Seeking professional help when self-help efforts to improve your mental health aren’t working is a sign of strength, not weakness.
- Living a healthy lifestyle and incorporating mental health tools to thrive may not be easy but can be achieved by gradually making small changes and building on those successes.
As MHA mentions in its toolkit, it’s important to accept the situations in life that we cannot change, actively work to process the mental struggles associated with big changes, manage anger and frustration, recognize when trauma may be affecting your mental health, challenge negative thinking patterns, and make time to take care of yourself. A big factor in this is stress.
Stress affects people in a variety of ways, such as muscle tension, headaches, stomach discomfort, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Ignoring workplace stress can have lasting harmful effects on individuals, families, co-workers, and communities. Stress can be harmful to health and increase mental health challenges, including clinical mental illness and substance use disorders as well as other emotions like stress, grief, feeling sad and anxious, where these feelings are temporary and not part of a diagnosable condition. While there are many things in life that induce stress, work can be one of those factors. However, workplaces can also be a key place for resources, solutions, and activities designed to improve our mental health and well-being.
Some practical tools that everyone can use to improve their mental health and increase resiliency, regardless of the situations they are dealing with include items from the National Safety Council (NSC) and Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC):
NSC
Mental Health Cost Calculator
Substance Use Cost Calculator
Research on Mental Health, Substance Use & EAPs
Impairment Recognition and Response Training for Supervisors
Connect2Prevent
Respond Ready Workplace Initiative
ABC
Total Human Health Initiative Toolkit
Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention in the Workplace
Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention Needs Analysis & Prevention Tool
May is recognized as Mental Health Month and ReMA has gathered a variety of resources...