Pre-empt a mental health epidemic

Depression is now the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide, affecting people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all countries. In the HR Indaba Conversation, made possible by Sanlam Corporate, HR executives discussed how raising awareness for depression can help pre-empt a potential mental health epidemic.

BY CHUMA MXO

Athol Swanepoel

Seen in the chat

“We have a wellness offering for staff members and their family, and I think there are staff who reach out. I have noticed an increase in cases of depression; misconstrued at times as people being lazy, due to lack of understanding on the employer side of mental wellness. Also, great loss due to Covid and loss of family members, colleagues, friends – taking a huge toll on staff. As HR we need to be that safe space.” - Keitha January, HR practitioner at the University of Witwatersrand

Acting head of corporate distribution at Sanlam, Nzwa Shoniwa, presented statistics from the 2018 annual benchmark symposium, which revealed that apart from longevity at a country level, a healthier population has the obvious benefits of reduced healthcare costs, increased GDP through a more productive workforce and less absenteeism.

“Employee health and wellbeing is now widely acknowledged as a key driver of business success,” he said, and so some employers are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of looking after both the mental and physical health of their staff.

CEO at Healthy Living Consulting, Ronald Abvajee, believes that if companies don’t address mental health issues head on, we might face an epidemic. “From last year, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases [NICD] and different professors have said that the next pandemic we will be dealing with will be mental health,” he commented. Athol Swanepoel, HR director, East and Southern Africa at Nestlé, said mental health was very high on the agenda at a global and local level. “We have webinars where mental health is the theme of the conversation and we try by all means to create engaging platforms where people can discuss and interact with one another,” he said.

Mental health is high on the list of matters discussed at fortnightly executive level meetings. Athol added that people knew mental health and wellness were important, but Covid-19 really drove it home and now employers have realised that it’s an indispensable part of ensuring that employees are well taken care of.

“Covid-19 has really helped to bring mental health to the fore,” he remarked.

Time to destigmatise

He made reference to tennis player Naomi Osaka and gymnast Simone Biles who recently announced they were not coping mentally, and took some time off. “That is helping us to destigmatise something that we have tried to hide previously, and now we are more prepared to talk about it openly and put some measures in place, because our leaders and people we look up to are showing vulnerability,” he said.

Portia Thokoane, CHRO at Dark Fibre Africa, said, “To echo what the other panellists said, holistic wellness – including mental wellness – is a foundational common currency not only for business success but for human morality as well.” She added, “Globally, the pandemic has revealed that the education system has had a very strong emphasis on physical health and not mental health, and in organisations we can’t even assess if someone has a mental illness or not.”

Portia said businesses really needed to step up and have tangible strategies to be advocates of mental wellness and run anti-stigma campaigns, “because if we do not figure it out, we will certainly have a big problem on our hands”. She concluded, “Another area that is a huge concern for us is that there aren’t clear insurance and employee benefits that cover mental health illnesses. It’s a problem that requires companies to come together and come up with solutions and rectify this problem.” 