To mark Mental Health Awareness Week, MHFA England Workplace Lead, Jaan Madan, last week blogged for the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on MHFA England’s ‘Address Your Stress’ campaign, launched in response to new survey data published by the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) highlighting the impact of stress on working age people.
Discussing the new MHF data, Jaan highlights that over a quarter (28%) of millennials reported feeling that powering through stress at work is expected, compared to only 12% of baby boomers and that more of this younger generation felt that stress impacts their productivity (34% vs 19%). He notes that, alongside this divide, across both generations, only 14% of people reported feeling comfortable talking to a manager about stress.
Jaan goes on to explain the impact of stress and mental illness in the workplace and emphasises the need to treat mental and physical health equally in the workplace. In closing he calls on employers and employees alike to play their part in creating healthy working environments and signposts reader to MHFA England’s ‘Address Your Stress’ toolkit.
The ‘Address Your Stress’ toolkit is a new resource designed to help everyone to identify signs and sources of stress, reflect on different coping strategies, and take steps to help reduce the impact too much stress can have. The toolkit is free for anyone to download from MHFA England’s official campaign page and includes stress-themed GIFs, shareable infographics on stress, and an interactive digital ‘stress container’ tool.
You can read Jaan’s article in full here and download the ‘Address Your Stress’ toolkit here.