This Chef In Sacramento Launched A Service To Help Combat Mental Illness Among Restaurant Workers

When celebrity chef, author, and travel documentarian Anthony Bourdain died by suicide in 2018, it rocked the food industry. And when the restaurant and hospitality community in Sacramento lost 12 people in a year for a variety of reasons — including suicide — restaurant owner Patrick Mulvaney decided to take action.

“The startling suicide of Anthony Bourdain and others here in my hometown of Sacramento brought home for me how inadequate mental health services are for those in my industry,” Mulvaney wrote on his organization’s website.

Mulvaney and more than a dozen Sacramento chefs met with mental health experts and other community partners to create a program called I Got Your Back. They established a system in which employees drop a card into an anonymous box when they clock in for a shift, giving employees a safe place to express their state of mind and the floor manager a new method for knowing how the crew is doing and feeling. At least one restaurant employee trained in peer counseling will wear a purple lapel and will reach out to those who are struggling and be open to conversations with anyone who needs help.

According to a 2015 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration study, 17 percent of full-time service and hospitality employees suffer from substance abuse disorders. The goal is to provide tools and skills to identify and talk about mental health issues in a safe environment that encourages people to seek help they may need.

“Ours is an industry with a problem we don’t like to talk about, but we can’t keep shying away from the hard conversations,” Bobbin Mulvaney — Patrick’s wife — said on the organization’s website. “I Got Your Back is peer-to-peer support that helps us watch for signs of distress and gives us a safe place to talk about our personal struggles.”

The program piloted in 22 restaurants in 2019, and following data analysis and interviews, I Got Your Back will expand to other cities in California and nationwide.