Why you need honest mental health advocates in your organisation

This post is written by Brian Day, Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing Champion, UK Government - HMRC

• The problem: We are facing a mental health crisis in the workplace.
• Why it matters: Proper mental health advocacy and direction can improve outcomes.
• The solution: Asking those who have been through issues to present to colleagues charts a path for support.

During the pandemic, mental health has been impacted adversely. For example, average mental distress was 8.1% higher in April 2020 than it was between 2017 and 2019 and the proportion of people reporting sleep problems increased from 16% before the pandemic to 25% in April 2020.

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For many people it is something that they have never experienced before. They see themselves as being “invincible.” They felt lost and unable to deal with their emotions and feelings.

I wanted to try to explain these feelings, having had mental health issues all my life. I wanted people to know that they are not “going mad” and that it is okay to feel the way they do. I also wanted to help people “love themselves” again.

My goal now is to tell my story to anyone and everyone who wants to hear it to push back on the negativity surrounding mental health.

My first step was to put together a presentation entitled “Loving Yourself.” The presentation focused on five ways to love yourself and gave helpful advice and resources to address each element using resources available to me but interwoven with personal insight into my own battle with depression, anxiety and OCD. Within the presentation I highlighted support both through my own organisation and external organisations.

Once the presentation was complete, I had to find an audience. Luckily my daytime role as a DIW (Diversity Inclusion and Wellbeing) champion provided me with such an audience. My line manager was keen for me to do this and we set up virtual roadshows for my directorate which were well attended.

I soon got lots of emails from other directorates asking for me to present to their staff — which I was happy to do. I have lost track of how many people I have done this presentation for in total.

But every time I give it, I’m reminded that it’s important to be honest with yourself. I have faced some challenges, not least my own mental wellbeing. Talking about something with which you struggle daily (depression and anxiety) can cause feelings within you that you may have preferred not to resurface. However, I quickly realised that this was why I did these presentations. It was to prove that people are human, and that mental health is nothing to be ashamed of.

My biggest justification for doing these presentations came when I received in an email shortly after one of the talks ended. The person wrote that they had been struggling with mental health issues. They stated that they had found my presentation comforting, and that they had taken the difficult step of seeking help. They thanked me for being “brave” and telling my mental health story. I received a follow up email three days later saying that they had begun counselling and had signed up to be a mental health advocate so that they could be there for other people.

I still get requests to talk to other directorates and have done presentations for other government departments. I have even recorded my story on video of how I have battled depression, anxiety, OCD and mental health issues since my nervous breakdown in 2007. I also talk candidly about how I came back from a failed suicide attempt to be the strong civil servant I am today.

This has been quite a journey for me. I have learnt a lot about myself and helped others learn about their own mental health. I have realised that by telling my personal story, I have made mental health less of a stigma and more acceptable and understood. My goal now is to tell my story to anyone and everyone who wants to hear it to push back on the negativity surrounding mental health.

If by writing this article I have inspired you to think about mental health, then I have done my job. If you are struggling with your own “demons” then reach out to others for help. Don’t suffer alone. There are many avenues open to you to help you keep feelings under control and to get you back to good mental health. It won’t be easy and there will be big obstacles in your way, but I am confident you can do it. I found inspiration in the following, which actually sums up how I feel. I hope the below bullet points will also help you.

• Having anxiety and depression is like being scared and tired at the same time
• It’s the fear of failure but no urge to be productive
• It’s wanting friends but not knowing how to make them and hating to socialize
• It’s wanting to be alone but not wanting to be lonely
• It’s caring about everything then caring about nothing
• It’s feeling everything at once then feeling paralysingly numb

— Brian Day

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