I’ve felt the need to create this pod as we’re approaching World Mental Health Day and I’ve already seen a ton of content about it. Some of which has rubbed me the wrong way a bit.

I love Awareness Days, when they’re done for the right reasons, but it really drives me mad when it’s an excuse for people to push their own agenda.

The one great thing that came from the pandemic, is the fact that people are much more aware of mental health issues now. It’s become much less of a stigma and people are way more understanding about what mental health is.

Now, I grew up in a family of medics – my dad even ran a psychiatric hospital, and so I was immersed in this stuff from a young age. I went to medical school and wanted to be a psychiatrist too. I found it all incredibly fascinating.

But these days, mental health is looked upon with a lot less of a medical lens and is applied to almost every aspect of life. Let’s take a look at the WHO’s definition of mental health for a moment.

I’m gonna read it out verbatim here:

Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community. It is an integral component of health and well-being that underpins our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build relationships and shape the world we live in. Mental health is a basic human right. And it is crucial to personal, community and socio-economic development.

Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It exists on a complex continuum, which is experienced differently from one person to the next, with varying degrees of difficulty and distress and potentially very different social and clinical outcomes.

Mental health conditions include mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities as well as other mental states associated with significant distress, impairment in functioning, or risk of self-harm. People with mental health conditions are more likely to experience lower levels of mental well-being, but this is not always or necessarily the case.

So, the WHO addresses mental health as being an everyday thing – a “basic human right” in fact.

It’s no longer concerned with the mental disorders or is considered to be a dirty term. In fact, it’s the opposite – people are throwing this term around every single day and sometimes using it as an excuse not to do things because they can’t be bothered.

This year’s World Mental Health Day actually has a theme – “Workplace Mental Health”, which is perfect, because this is what I want to talk about.

I always feel like business owners are at a disadvantage here, as they are outnumbered. Yes, entrepreneurship is rising, but there are never going to be more business owners than employees. So the louder voice will always be that of the employee.

There is SOOOOO much focus on employee wellbeing, but where is the focus on the employer?

The general narrative is that of a large corporation and the big evil boss who overworks their staff. Sure, this does happen and it’s not right. But then this advice and direction trickles down into the small businesses and they expect us to do the same thing as those big corporates and puts an immense pressure on us.

The culture in a large organisation, is very different to that in a small business and different practices will affect businesses differently.

I have many friends who were running businesses and since the pandemic, they’ve had to shut down because of how difficult it became to maintain staff. The demands rose and the small businesses couldn’t keep up with it.

Here are just some of the things we were expected to provide:
– Fully flexible working: all over the world and any hours
– Unlimited paid leave
– Travel expenses
– Food allowances
– Gym membership
– Peloton in the office
– Very regular socials
– WFH packages
– Mental health support – e.g. therapy

And we’re a very small business. But this became “standard” and so employees were expecting this as a bare minimum.

Then, on top of this, employees expected to be given work that fulfilled them and with clients who they liked and shared values with. Now, we generally are selective with our clients, but not every project is going to be fun.

We’ve always tried to accommodate so that people are working on the projects that they prefer to work on, but it got so ridiculous at some point.

Employees would just refuse to do any task that they couldn’t be bothered to do. They said it would be bad for their mental health if they didn’t enjoy the work. I even had one employee reassign every single task he had to me! He would just go in our Asana and shamelessly change it to my task to complete.

It got a little too far for my liking.

Because we succumbed to most of that list I read out earlier, we had flexible working and I wasn’t the type to micro-manage. So, when I did check in about the work and ask for updates, I’d realise things weren’t done. When I asked why, there was always an excuse. So, you’d give them a bit more time and things were still not done. This is when they’d say they have mental health problems.

So, what do you do now? It’s tough.
Because so many people do genuinely struggle with their mental health.

We did a lot of support for this – we gave people paid leave for their mental health, paid for therapy etc. We even got a wellbeing consultant to come support our business and see what else we could do. We put in every practice that was requested for the employees, but they still didn’t want to work.

Eventually, we had to have frank conversations with them and the feedback was that there was just too much work to do. In a larger organisation, they didn’t have to do much. They could sit back and do nothing for most of the day. And they had more people they could delegate to or get to help them.

So, I think working in a small business is really tough. It’s not for everyone.

I think that some larger organisations work their staff a lot more, but they have the big pay packages and lots of perks to sort of make up for it – I guess it depends on what your priorities are.

But as small business owners, we just want to have a supportive team who are happy to get stuck in with normal duties. We’re still flexible working and most of the team probably work less than 20 hours a week most of the time. And still get paid for 40.

However, we also need to be mindful that their mental health can be affected by many more issues rather than just the hours they’re working.

But it does make me think… pre-pandemic, we all just worked in an office for 5 days a week, 40+ hours a week and most people didn’t talk about being depressed or anxious.

I absolutely LOVE that we’re bringing more awareness to these issues, but are we now highlighting them so much that this is all we can think about? Is it reducing our resilience?

Because when things got tough before, we knuckled down and fought through it. It was tough, it was stressful and it wasn’t pleasant. But we got through it and came out stronger on the other side.

Now, we look at a situation and think: “Why should I put myself through that? I will just protect my mental health”. So, we avoid these things, don’t try and often don’t achieve as much.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of situations where this is a MUCH better approach. I’m not saying we need to take on every difficult thing that’s out there. But I’m wondering, are we less equipped to take on hard things now?

As an entrepreneur, it’s really interesting, because it’s so incredibly tough out there. We need a lot of resilience and grit to make things worse. But is the next generation of entrepreneurs going to survive if everything is a mental health issue?

For example, when things get difficult, entrepreneurs are now throwing around the words overwhelmed and burnout. Sure, these things can happen, but only if you KEEP putting yourself under this level of stress time and time again. But the odd occasion where you have to hustle to get through a tough spot can actually be a good thing.

A healthy level of stress can push us entrepreneurs to develop better time management, delegate tasks, and improve work-life balance, ensuring we don’t fall into that nasty trap of burnout. So, it forces us to adapt our strategies for better efficiency.

In moderate doses, stress increases your levels of adrenaline and cortisol, which then can heighten awareness, improve concentration, and make you more alert. This is actually a great thing in certain circumstances. Imagine you’re going in for a big pitch or you have a really tight deadline to hit. This is what you need to hit it.

But imagine thinking: “Actually, this pitch is too stressful – I think I will just take a break for my mental health and do some self-care instead. Sure, business is important, but my health is more important so I can do this pitch another time when I’m more ready.”

This is literally the words of many business owners I know.

And again, sure, it may be the right decision for you – every person is in a different situation. But for most, if you don’t put yourself out there and seize those opportunities, you won’t get the results you want.

So sometimes, you need to embrace those moments of stress and realise that it’s building up your mental toughness.

You see, it’s not the awareness of mental health that I have an issue with – I think that’s been great. I’ve even been incredibly grateful for that myself even, as I’ve started to analyse what I do that brings me more stress than needed.

My issue is with the content around mental health online. It focuses on the wrong thing, in order to sound inspirational. It simplifies things and makes mental health seem so easy.

There are now suddenly all these supposed “mental health coaches” with absolutely zero experience in this background. People who claim to help you reduce burnout as an entrepreneur, or people doing wellness retreats or have a product etc.

Most of these people have no qualifications in mental health, but yet are claiming to be experts and are charging thousands for their services/products.

These spout out niceties on social media and it makes people feel good about themselves and oversimplifies everything.

For example, the gang that think that all you need to do to improve your mental health is to stay positive! “Just have positive thoughts”. “Reframe everything to be less negative”. “Avoid everything negative”.

NO! This is toxic positivity. Sure, having a positive outlook is essential for recovery and will definitely help with many things, but it’s not the sole solution.

In fact, if you just avoid the negative issues and try to wrap everything up in a positive pretty bow, you’re going to do more harm than good. That negative thing or that issue causing you stress right away isn’t going to go away unless you actually address it.

That’s as bad as turning to booze when you have a problem. Sure, that will mask those symptoms and make you feel good temporarily, but it won’t solve any problems and you will feel way worse later.

It’s like those talking about their self-care and self-love routines. Apparently now, all you need is a bit of morning yoga, maybe even an ice bath, a great skincare routine, a cup of matcha and you’re good to go! Oh wait, you also need a good night’s sleep with pillow mist on your pillow too.

Now, don’t get me wrong, all of that feels great. And I’d be more than happy to have that every bloody morning and night. But it’s not going to make all my stresses go away. It’s defo gonna help. But we still need to be prepared to address difficult times. It makes you more prepared perhaps. You feel refreshed, energised and clearer to do so, but you still have to take action.

Also, if you do also have serious mental health problems, no amount of self care is going to take them away. It’s absolutely OK to seek professional help when times are bad. A spa day is just not going to suffice sometimes. As much as I love them.

The thing is, there’s a bit of a mental health “trend” at the moment, where everything seems to be a mental health disorder. For example, it’s now “cool” to have ADHD. That can be a podcast for another day…

But everyone is diagnosing themselves with something or other and it’s almost like they’ve got an excuse for not achieving their goals. Because we’re all now educated on how serious mental health is, we’re also more compassionate about it and if we do hear about a mental health disorder, we’re supportive and give people a lot of leeway.

But are we enabling the excuses? Are we reducing our resilience by doing this? If everything has a diagnosis, are we saying that there’s something wrong with us instead of embracing the quirks of who we are?

Is the incessant need to see everything in a positive light actually causing more negativity and resentment?

Sometimes, if we cover a topic too much, it can have the opposite effect.

I just feel that mental health is overdone, by the wrong people.

I want to hear more from those who are mental health professionals. I want their voices to be louder. I want to understand what is going to be good for our health in the LONG-TERM, not these short term fixes and self-care routines.

So, the next time you’re consuming content about mental health, check who’s saying it – what background do they have in this profession? Are they just doing things to sound inspirational, but have another agenda? If something sounds too easy, maybe it actually is?

Long-term thinking is always better; don’t get distracted by those shiny feel-good things that will fade away quickly.

Please all look after your mental health, no matter which techniques you use, and keep sniffing out the bullsh*t.