Why Organizations Need to Focus on Mental Health

NYT - Companies need to understand the difference between poor mental health and chronic mental illness so they can design jobs that don’t hurt mental health and enable people with mental illness to thrive, according to an Academy of Management Annals article.

“We see a lot of poor mental health in the workplace is often caused by the workplace. It can overlap with things like stress and burnout, and it can be from high-intensity jobs or poorly designed jobs. But that’s not the same as mental illness. With mental illness, that’s about people with chronic conditions; they may or may not be in generally poor mental health. It’s very much like physical health and physical illness. I could have arthritis in a particular joint, but my overall health could be excellent otherwise, and it might not have anything to do with my ability to do my job. Whereas I could be in generally poor health, and that might not manifest in a specific condition,” explained Emily H. Rosado-Solomon of Babson College.

Rosado-Solomon and her coauthors Jaclyn Koopmann of Auburn University, Wyatt Lee of Auburn University, and Matthew A. Cronin of George Mason University reviewed 556 scholarly articles in the fields of management, epidemiology, psychiatry, and public, occupational, and mental health for their article, “Mental Health and Mental Illness in Organizations: A Review, Comparison, and Extension.”

“What we find is that the conversations about creating mentally healthy workplaces and the mental health consequences of not having mentally healthy workplaces are problematic,” Rosado-Solomon said.

The stakes are high for organizations and their employees.

“Organizations lose 200 million workdays and up to $16.8 billion each year from mental health challenges due to healthcare costs, presenteeism (being physically present but not psychologically engaged), absenteeism, reduced productivity, and other barriers to successful work,” the authors wrote. “Prior to the pandemic, one in six employees had a mental illness, while up to 60% of employees were affected by mental health challenges. Now, 75% of employees report at least one symptom of a mental illness, and up to 41% more are talking about their mental health at work than they were in 2019. Moreover, the World Health Organization reports that, during the pandemic, incidence rates of depression and anxiety have increased approximately 25%.”

“Understanding mental health is a business imperative,” Rosado-Solomon said. “Everybody in businesses can be affected by poor mental health or mental illness somehow. The statistics show that about 20% of people, probably more post-COVID, will have a diagnosed mental illness in their lifetime. That means any organization with more than five people has somebody who’s personally affected by this. If they don’t, statistically, the other four out of five will probably experience a period of poor mental health, or have a family member or a friend who has a mental illness. Because this is such a ubiquitous concern, it is really important for organizations to learn how to help people with poor mental health thrive, and to make sure that they are not exacerbating existing issues, through their job designs and their work practices.”

“Supporting employees with mental illness is really a critical business competency. We see leaders, athletes, and celebrities talking about their mental illness. These people, from a human capital perspective, are at the top of their game. There are countless examples of people who have mental illness and are high performers professionally. It’s in organizations’ best interests, from a business standpoint, to be able to employ and keep those people,” she said. “There’s evidence that people with conditions such as bipolar and ADHD can actually do better in certain jobs than neurotypical colleagues. If we lump that all together as poor mental health, then we hide the space to talk about how we can help people with mental illness thrive.”

“I think it’s important for managers to keep in mind that mental health challenges don’t show up the same way for everyone. For example, with men in certain industries, it is not common for them to talk about their feelings. So if they’re feeling depressed or anxious, they’re much more likely to hide it. Just because employees aren’t saying they have a mental illness or burnout doesn’t mean that it’s not there,” she said.

The mental hygiene perspective

Addressing problems before they arise is key, Rosado-Solomon said.

“It’s things like workplace flexibility. It might be possible for some workplaces to offer working from home some days, or have a slightly flexible schedule. We know that a lack of autonomy, a lack of flexibility, an overload of having too much to do, and having poorly defined responsibilities, are all risk factors for poor mental health,” she said. “We’d like to see managers and researchers think about where it makes sense to address those root causes in workplaces. Before the mental health challenges manifest themselves.”

“We contend that organizations and policy makers need research that yields insights into how organizations can be proactive, in ways similar to the effective approach organizations currently take with physical health protection,” the authors wrote. “The mental hygiene perspective is analogous to widely accepted practices in physical hygiene; for instance, consider that dentists do not merely focus on having effective root canal procedures for those that develop cavities, but also emphasize the importance of brushing teeth and flossing to reduce the risk of developing severe cavities.”

The authors traced how U.S. organizations began to support employees’ physical health at the beginning of the twentieth century. Before that, “the burden of physical safety and health was borne by the worker who accepted their employment’s safety risks.” By 1970, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created, followed in 1990 by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which “requires most employers to grant reasonable accommodations for those with disabilities, including psychiatric disabilities (a term that includes many common types of mental illness, such as anxiety disorders and personality disorders), and protects such individuals from discrimination in employment.”

“Research has largely assumed that individual employees are responsible for their own mental health challenges, to the exclusion of investigating the organization’s responsibility for, and capacity to, ensure the mental health of its employees. This paper builds a platform from which to change the focus of research from reactive to proactive, and conduct future research that promotes mentally safe, healthy workplaces in which all employees can thrive and contribute to the organization’s success,” they wrote.