EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE MICHAEL HEMPSEED
What do leaders and HR professionals need to know about mental illness?
Michael Hempseed, HRNZ PD Programme Facilitator, looks at what people need to know about mental illness and how this knowledge can support our journey of business recovery and healing.
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any people think the psychological impact of disasters such as COVID-19 will be worse at the start then it will get better. Research suggests the opposite is true. The Canterbury Charity Hospital Trust found that if people needed counselling immediately after the 2011 earthquakes, on average, they needed two-to-three sessions. The Charity Hospital found five years later if people needed counselling, on average, they needed 22 or 23 sessions. They found it wasn’t so much the effect of the earthquakes that people needed counselling for, it was the long-term hassle and frustration of things like battling insurance companies and moving offices multiple times.
We need to understand the long-term effect of disasters
When a disaster strikes, many people have a significant amount of energy and resilience to fight it. As the months and years wear on, their 14
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energy and resilience can be slowly worn away. International research suggests the biggest psychological impact of disasters often hits threeto-five years later. The same applies to someone who has experienced the death of someone close to them. Employers should be aware of this. If staff say they are struggling with the longer-term effect of a disaster or personal tragedy, employers should not think, “Aren’t you over this by now?”. Instead, they should offer support and ongoing understanding.
Addressing this effectively, requires a whole team approach
I was recently asked to speak at Gore District Council, to discuss preventing mental illness and overcoming failures. The council allowed anyone to attend the talk, no matter what their position in the council. I was impressed to see staff who work at cemeteries attending. While this may sound like an odd choice, it was a good one. The cemetery staff had come across someone who was visibly distressed at the loss of a child. We never know where we will meet someone who is showing signs of distress, mental illness or suicide. We need to teach people, at all levels and in all jobs, to know how to respond.
Powernet took me to every one of their sites, even really small places such as Palmerston (in the South Island) and Lumsden. This was excellent to see, because often rural communities have double the rate of suicide, per head of population, as larger communities. Mental health training must include everyone within an organisation, no matter where they are in the country.
Mental illness is more than just feeling sad
We often use the term mental illness to mean depression, but it covers a range of conditions from addiction to eating disorders, anxiety, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), to name a few. We often think that, if someone experiences depression, they will feel sad. Most people with moderate to severe depression report feeling numbness or no emotions, they can have difficulty concentrating, sleeping, they can feel drained of all energy, feel worthless and even experience a lot of physical pain. We need to be very clear that there is so much more to depression than feeling sad. The same is true for anxiety. When someone with generalised anxiety walks down the street, even if it’s a sunny day and the birds are singing,
