Mental health is no joke

THE FINDINGS of a recent survey of 1,207 public sector workers done by the Office of the Chief Personnel Officer are telling. Just under two thirds of all respondents felt senior management did not consider the psychological health of employees of great importance.

If we interpolate these findings against the wider public sector – which employs roughly 100,000 people – then we realise just how many disgruntled and neglected public servants are out there.

Anyone who has endured the inefficiencies of the public service might not be surprised. But still, it shows us another side of the story.

Looking from the outside, it is easy to call for public-sector reform, to ask public servants to do better and to take home less pay, given the demands on the Treasury. What is not often appreciated are the conditions, often demoralising, under which these workers function. If the public feels the pain of red tape and bureaucracy from the outside, imagine what it must be like to work within a system defined by them.

Neglect of mental health, which is widespread in this country, is a key part of this picture. As policy-makers this week observed World Mental Health Day, Dr Hazel Othello, the Ministry of Health’s director of mental health, had cause to issue a call for workers to take a “mental health day” when and if they need it.

“If that’s what you need to do to remain well, then yes, you do not hesitate,” she said. “That’s what we talk about – stigma. You do not hesitate to take a sick day because you have the flu.”

For some, this might jokily suggest soca artiste Kees Dieffenthaller’s hit song Mental Day. But addressing mental health is no laughing matter.

There is obviously a difference between slacking off and safeguarding health. Too often, in an effort to police the former, the latter is neglected. The price paid goes well beyond the individual worker involved.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety, at a cost of US$1 trillion in lost productivity.

If workers are not functioning at optimal levels, they will affect the entire workplace. Absenteeism could actually worsen if people are not allowed time off when necessary.

Addressing mental health is not just good practice, it is serious business.

And yet, when it comes to modernising the workplace, the focus has been on things like pay levels and the extent to which workers should work from home. But when we talk about public-sector reform, we should also consider the ways in which addressing mental health can be prioritised.