Corporate Mental Health Awareness is not for Your Benefit
Thinking your bosses are providing it with the best intentions misses the point.
Anyone who looks at my Medium account will see a conspicuous lack of articles recently. As this whole article is about mental health, I wanted to open by saying that once the pandemic lockdowns began, I sunk into a depression, the likes of which I hadn’t seen for a while. I have a history of anxiety and depression, and have a habit of neglecting my wellbeing and focusing very narrowly on one thing to push through, as if my ADHD is helping me to hang on by at least one thread. In this case, my job. Though as we’ve established for years, work won’t love you back.
Since being diagnosed with General Anxiety and Major Depressive Disorders (GAD and MDD respectively) about 8 years ago, I’ve spoken to a variety of specialists, and read widely on the topic of mental health, therapy, and wellbeing in an attempt to get to the bottom of my state. I haven’t had my ADHD formally diagnosed, however I don’t care to either. Diagnosis gatekeepers can yell all they like, but there is power in self-understanding and (assuming some self-awareness, compassion, and knowledge) finding your own ways to muddle through by discussing with other neurodiverse people.
Mental Health: A History in Class Struggle
The factory system is really not healthy for the individual factory worker. Especially when worker solidarity is purposefully suppressed to avoid organised labour movements. Some early diagnoses were assembled by doctors on behalf of factory owners and overseers as a means to explain workers who were “underperforming” or “unenthusiastic” about working 20-hour shifts in debilitating and sometimes deadly conditions for unlivable pay.
A multi-institution study suggests that the descendents of those workers in industrial and post-industrial areas of England and Wales have a higher rate of mental illness and lower expected lifespan than others in these nations. To speculate, this may be due to intergenerational trauma among other factors.
When the 1914 and 1939 wars rolled around, similar approaches were taken by commanding officers. These commanding officers spent most of the time in fairly safe offices at home, dictating troop movements and making use of intelligence. When they’d visit the front lines, they were appalled at the demeanour of literal teenagers from impoverished backgrounds who spent all hours of the day being fired upon and shelled.
Many just wanted to go home, which was treated as an illness in itself, and still is to an extent. When these soldiers returned home, the field of mental health opened up insofar as to create the diagnosis of “shell shock” to describe what we would call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) today. Domestic violence was common. Suicides rose in returning veterans (though nowhere near the rate of later 20th and 21st century veterans). Many Britons today still struggle with being emotionally open and honest, more so back then. The field of psychotherapy was very much in its infancy, and so millions suffered in silence, accepting that “daddy was very different when he came back from the war.”
No shit. Daddy was a pawn in a game between wealthy imperial powers. The war was really nothing to do with him, nor anyone he locked eyes with in a shredded, burned out French forest. He’d been fed stories about glory and valour, only to watch his friends die quickly in a red mist, slowly from sepsis, or expeditedly down the barrel of their own gun as they felt no other way out.
Make no mistake, this is the factory situation recreated in a new setting. Again the wealthy sit in relative comfort claiming to make hard decisions, while the poor die and are pathologised when they question their lot. As well as trench warfare, there was plenty of blatant class warfare. Even back at home, conscientious objectors were medicalised and pathologised for refusing to conscribe.
The mental health research communities still haven’t really come to terms with the past of their profession. The diagnostic statistical manual (DSM) is currently on its 5th edition (DSM-V). There is still very little reckoning over its violent past and present. The DSM-I, for example, classified homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance”. In the DSM-II, this was downgraded to a “sexual deviation”. The DSM-V, no less, still contains the diagnosis for Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), one symptom of which is “Often argues with authority figures.” It doesn’t pass judgement on the validity of the authority figure, however. Contents of the DSM say a lot more about the society and the attitudes of the authorial committee than it does the objects of study.
I use objects very purposefully here. They weren’t subjects or patients. The term “deviation” when applied in a context like this makes it clear that the behaviour is different to what the authors feel is “normal”, and difference from the norm is a pathology.
The workers, whether on the factory floor or the battlefield, were also treated like objects, as they were and still are treated. Disposable, replaceable, almost like machine parts. For those not familiar with the history of labour relations, there have been so many attempts throughout history to control workers, even by illegal means. Mental health diagnosis is just one such tool.
Mental Health or Corporate Control?
A piece of advice given in my increasingly corporate business’ outsourced mental health programme was to paraphrase “if you suspect a colleague is struggling, don’t try to help them. Report them.” To me and many others, such a sentiment is horrifying. Someone who feels burned out and alienated is not going to feel any better if someone they trust has handed them over to some perceived authority. This authority has some say over whether they remain employed and how the quality of their work is perceived, which only serves to increase the stress and anxiety.
Holding “Mental Health Awareness” events (I’m all too aware thank you) serves three central purposes: The more mundane is a box-ticking exercise to show the company thinks it has tried the minimum to aid their employees’ mental health so they can see themselves as “one of the good ones”. The second and third are far more nefarious. To conceptually depoliticise mental health, and to dissolve some worker solidarity.
Depoliticising mental health is worryingly easy to do in a group of people who are either not very politically aware, or not very mental health aware. In its simplest form, human life is small-t traumatising. These small traumas mount throughout our lives; we’re made to feel inferior by a boss here, a friend breaks our trust there. With healthy communication, some of these can be worked through; especially those that have something to do with friends and family. When it comes to institutions, this is much more difficult.
An institution has more money than the individual, and with legal systems that are increasingly in support of the institution over the individual, it’s very easy for an organisation to screw over large numbers of people, be they employees, customers, or unlucky residents near a facility.
As the systems, politics, and philosophies we interact with isolate and alienate us, we understandably begin to feel lonely, as we lose a sense of community. As the trauma builds going through life, maybe with some big-T Traumas thrown in for good measure (war, abuse, bereavement, and such), we either become overwhelmed. To cope, we become numb, or are constantly on the verge of breakdown. These responses are completely understandable in response to what’s happened. However, to acknowledge them is not enough.
We’ve been in a time of financial volatility for decades. Buying a house is close to impossible for someone of my age. Renting is getting harder globally, and energy bills are more than doubling in the UK. The earth continues to burn. So the least companies can do is to help their employees by giving them a liveable wage given the societal circumstances they find themselves in. People with highly specialised skillsets are finding markets depressed as no company pays enough to justify the debt they incurred through decades of training, learning, and hard-gained experience. Even entry-level roles require experience, making them not entry-level, but excuses to pay less.
One really minor thing many companies can do is to increase wages. Those with the economically conservative brainworms will say “that can’t work. It’ll damage businesses and cause inflation.” If you can’t afford employees, then scale back your business. You’re clearly living outside your means as a company. As for inflation, that’s an excuse used by all politicians for anything at the moment that will help the average person.
And would you look at that! They stalled and did nothing. They lowered taxes for the super-wealthy. They made people in general sceptical of taxes! Perhaps we should be if the taxation props up aristocratic excesses of the already wealthy instead of going towards public good.
So in that sense, a discussion of mental health via a corporate entity is trying to offload your job’s complicity for your situation, and trying to further individualise the anguish you feel. In part, this subtly tells us we’re not worth improving our work conditions and pay. It’s up to us to change how we feel about it. And if someone is struggling because of the reality of all this? Send them our way. We’ll realign their thinking or increase their struggle by casting them out.
It’s very rare for people with power to just suddenly change their mind unprompted, so that’s why people discuss collective action. You’re likely all struggling equally under the decisions of HR and your higher-ups. Discussing these struggles forms trust and bonds. But be careful that you’re discussing this with the right people. Many companies are illegally trying to discourage or outright ban discussion of wages or working conditions. Why? Because the more these are discussed, the greater the worker solidarity. The greater the worker solidarity the more likely workers are to organise.
However, employers commonly underestimate their employees, despite fearing collective action. The incentive of management is to get the most out of spending as little as possible, which again, includes a drop in safety, quality of life and wages for employees. An organised workforce can then bargain for better pay and conditions as refusal can lead to a halt in work until matters are negotiated. The ousting of unions in the US and UK during the Red Scare and Thatcherite eras respectively has had a legacy of anti-collectivist and anti-union sentiment hammered into us all from a young age.
What about Mental Health First Aiders?
Not every company has mental health first aiders (MHFAs), so this may require an explanation. MHFAs are employees trained to be a point of contact for other employees. They tend to be well-meaning members of the organisation who just want to help struggling people. This role, then, preys on that kind of person. Many organisations get MHFAs because they’ve seen them being appointed at other organisations, but fail to think about the deeper connotations. If you genuinely think you need MHFAs, then you’re admitting that conditions at your organisation are at best unhelpful for-, or at worst actively harmful to- your employees’ mental health.
Psychotherapists can train for decades and be simply okay at their job. What makes anyone honestly think that two weeks’ training and a part time role is really going to help anyone? But then this is part of the problem. Your company says “We care. We have mental health first aiders.” The well-meaning person hears their coworkers’ concerns, and is now burdened with that knowledge, but is ultimately powerless to change anything. Is that supposed to be sustainable?
Now the manager can say “I’m sorry you feel that way. Please talk to the mental health first aider on our floor, or visit the organisation-suggested website that contains all this patronising information for living better.” A mentally unwell person is now easier to brush off for managers who don’t care.
Ultimately, this also comes down to the truth that your employer doesn’t care whether or not you’re mentally well, as long as you’re mentally well enough to work. These pale efforts to make you aware of your mental health, the training of mental health first aiders, they’re not to help you improve your inner self and help with [T/t]rauma, just good enough for you to chug along.
You really care about the mental wellbeing of your staff? Pay for therapy. You don’t want to go that far but you do want to make your workplace somewhere that mental health can be openly discussed? Ok great. Then be open to criticism about the effect your business practices have on your employees. You don’t want that? Right, then it’s all a facade.
Further Weird MHFA Stuff That the Author Experienced
During the first exercise, a diagram similar to the above was presented, along with the questions “What constitutes positive mental health?” and “What constitutes negative mental health?” This was clearly not written by anyone who has (or knows anyone with) a history of mental illness. To put it on a positive or negative axis is honestly gross, as that places a value judgement on the state.
We must ask for whom? And in what context? It makes sense for someone whose partner just died to feel depressed, anxious, or overwhelmed. They’re bereaved. It’s a really shitty situation to be in. It’s also a very necessary part of the grieving process. I’m going to guess that on this compass, that would fall on the negative arm. It’s not negative for the individual in the long run, but definitely feels awful in the moment. This person is likely unproductive though, and ultimately that’s what matters to a business. So that’s negative for the business.
This paradigm is so restrictive and completely toxic. Life is full of ups and downs. Our mental health fluctuates based on a number of factors. Only by feeling the major lows can we appreciate the highs, and we survive the lows by knowing the highs are coming.
On the topic of diagnosis, your colleagues have as much of a right to know your Mental health diagnoses as they do your sexual health status. For them to ask is intrusive and suspicious (both weirdly common by straight folks to queers), but to be diagnosed can have negative repercussions. There’s still stigma, so you may face doubt, judgement, or belittlement in the workplace. If your health insurance provider catches wind, it can increase your premiums. Within the medical community, there are so many preconceived notions (again, stigma) and pieces of outdated that you may be put in the wrong box and given the wrong drugs (I was once).
There’s a classic refrain originally from disability rights activists is being adopted more widely every day. “Nothing about us without us”. Disability-related policy, queer liberation, policies on sex workers, discussions on mental health; don’t leave the person concerned out of the room when you right about them. Hear their experience and actually listen. Then we can start to understand.
