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Figures show one in three workers considered leaving their job due to stress

As new figures reveal one in three workers considered leaving their job due to stress, a mental health expert has voiced concerns that improved awareness of mental health and the discussions around it are taking place without the necessary education to support it.

Research commissioned recently by work place standard accreditor Investors in People, found that 35% of workers have considered leaving their job due to excessive stress - caused by heavy work loads, tight deadlines and poor working environments.

This comes at a time when work place stress, anxiety and depression are cited as the single biggest cause of sick days in 2018-19 in a report published recently by the HSE (Health and Safety Executive); that’s 600,000 new and existing cases in the UK equating to 12.8m days or 57% of all working days lost. Emily Pearson is founder and managing director of corporate mental health consultancy Our Minds Work, she has over 20 years experience of delivering mental health services in the community and workplaces.

“A lot of what has been happening around raising awareness of mental health problems such as depression and anxiety and the reducing of stigma around these discussions and what they can lead too, including suicide, has been very positive and significant,” she said.

“These are important discussions that need to happen but they need to be framed better and contextualised to address the root causes.

“You wouldn’t raise awareness of heart disease without talking about the specific issues around its root causes such as poor diet or lack of exercise. But this is exactly what is happening to the national discourse and in many campaigns around mental health.

“Employers need to be aware of their responsibilities toward employee psychological health. The fact that work place stress, anxiety and depression are huge issues, with work absences numbering 12.8m days in 2018-19 according to HSE statistics, is great cause for concern.

“However I’m worried that we are now in danger of normalising words referring to what are essentially clinically diagnosable disorders, with the risk of people through no fault of their own mis-self diagnosing due to a huge gap in mental health education.

“As we have significantly raised awareness with campaigns to promote talking about our mental health at the same time there has been a significant gap in any form of mental health education for people. This fails to give clarity and a deeper understanding to facts around mental illness.

“Experiencing stress, anxiety and depression without it being a clinically diagnosed disorder is a reality. The real problem is that employees and employers have a lack of education around what is a normal human response to establishing when it becomes a disorder. This leaves some employees mistakenly thinking that they have a clinical mental illness. This can leave employers struggling to understand how they need to respond, especially where no health practitioner has been involved.

“Stress, depression and anxiety disorders are clinically diagnosed conditions that can prevent us from working, or even functioning at all in any part of our life. They need to be assessed by suitably qualified healthcare practitioners to ensure the correct diagnosis is given, treatments provided and reasonable adjustments made in the workplace for the correct support to be provided. Only then will the best outcomes for the employee and the workplace happen.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by 2B Communications Limited .