Normalising Therapy - 5 tips for supporting people’s mental health

Last night I ran a session for our Token Man Braintrust (a collective of male senior leaders who are committed to accelerating inclusion and diversity in the workplace) around normalising therapy which included a panel with Alex Holmes, author of “Time to Talk: How Men Think about Love, Connection and Belonging” and Tina Fiandaca, Change-maker at Utopia. As I start to develop long term programmes which are focused on engaging men and taking them on their own journeys, normalising therapy and ensuring men have access to it as part of their own toolkit is going to be fundamental. But as per the conversations last night, it was clear that there is still a massive stigma attached to therapy. Yesterday we heard words like fear, weakness, broken and failure and we were even given a couple of examples where a history of poor mental health actually impacted people’s career as it influenced promotion decisions ie given their history, can they cope with the increased stress?

It was also clear that in the discussions, there is a significant generational divide and there was a general feeling that most senior Board members were out of touch with the importance of therapy, thus creating a huge barrier to providing the right support in the workplace. Tina commented “The young people coming through school today are used to having counsellors at school but once they leave education, that support is completely dropped as they head into the workplace. It has to be any employer’s responsibility to continue supporting people as they go through their working lives. It is not just the right thing to do but it also makes business sense as having a clear mental health strategy is going to ensure your people are happier and consequently more productive.” This point was echoed by Alex - “Work takes so much of people’s working lives that it is clear that it is going to have a significant impact on people’s mental health. I left a job simply because I did not have the right support around me and could not afford therapy. If I had been given the right support. I am sure that I would still be in that job now.”

Anyway here are 5 tips for normalising therapy and better supporting people’s mental health in the workplace:

1 Ask yourself if you care - Alex’s tip was very simple but extremely powerful. Assuming you do care, he suggests you then need to ask yourself what you are doing to change the culture. And within that change, do everything you can to humanise people’s experiences at work. Alex comments “It feels that senior management often forget what it was like when they were younger and how stressful the pressure put on staff can be. We need to tap into this so that everyone can have a great empathy for 

2. Make it easier for people to connect with  their emotions - Tina suggested that the first step towards therapy is teaching people to get more comfortable with connecting with their own emotions. One study has shown that by simply naming an emotion, you can lessen its impact and this can be very effective in reducing anxiety. In the session we got the attendees to choose an emotion from the feelings wheel below and then to share in pairs for 5 minutes each why they were feeling that emotion. The feedback from all attendees was that it was extremely powerful. 

Source: Feelingswheel.com

3. Find your role models - Given the generational gap as well as the stigma surrounding therapy, it’s really important that you try and find senior leaders who are willing to speak about their own experiences of therapy. I myself have been doing therapy now for 12 months and speak regularly about the positive impact it has had on me so that people can better understand how powerful it can be. And if you can’t find someone from your own senior team, then maybe try reaching out to someone who is on the Inside Out Leaderboard which is a list of senior leaders who are open about their experience of mental ill-health.

4. Make it easy for people to access therapy - there are quite a few companies now that offer excellent packages for employers. In my previous business, we provided everyone with at least 4 sessions at the excellent Self Space that could be delivered either in person or over zoom through one of their corporate deals. Sanctus (you can hear my conversation with one of their co-founder on International Men’s Day a few years ago here) also offers a corporate scheme which provides an interesting blend of personal and professional development with proactive mental wellbeing support.  And if you are interested in finding your own therapist, here is a very handy guide to choosing the right therapist for you.

5. Make therapy part of a wider mental health strategy - while I applaud the work done by Mental Health First Aid England (I myself am a first aider), having MHFA first aiders is not a strategy. It is akin to having health insurance but no health and safety guidance in a factory. A mental health strategy should first and foremost aim to avoid any of the team reaching crisis point and will be a combination of creating an environment that is inclusive, diverse and psychologically safe as well as providing the tools to support people’s mental health. If you are looking for someone to support you, I can’t recommend Utopia highly enough although I am obviously biased. The most important thing is that you ensure that you as a business have a very clear mental health strategy as part of your overall people strategy.

If you have your own tips, please do include them in the comments. I would love to hear from you.

We are actively looking to grow the Brain Trust so if you know any male senior leaders who are looking to do more to accelerate inclusion and diversity in the workplace, do send them my way by either connecting me or just including them in the comments below.