Every year in May, with­out fail, in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions con­tact me for speak­ing en­gage­ments and many oth­ers add in­for­ma­tion to their so­cial me­dia plat­forms telling us we are cel­e­brat­ing Men­tal Health Aware­ness Month. Peo­ple are usu­al­ly ex­cit­ed to do some­thing mean­ing­ful to mark the oc­ca­sion and then it be­comes very dif­fi­cult for me to tell them the oth­er news: Men­tal health aware­ness month is not marked lo­cal­ly in May or any oth­er month.

Most times I would not com­ment on peo­ple’s so­cial me­dia feeds or cel­e­bra­to­ry events, but in the ear­li­er years, it was quite an ir­ri­tant to see these fly­ers and in­vi­ta­tions or to hear the ra­dio an­nounc­ers say it is men­tal health aware­ness month with­out stat­ing it is be­ing ob­served in the US or UK or wher­ev­er else.

In T&T we have a men­tal health aware­ness week which is in Oc­to­ber. It is whichev­er week in which World Men­tal Health Day, Oc­to­ber 10, falls. It is a rel­a­tive­ly new ob­ser­vance and, with three years in a pan­dem­ic, it may not as yet have tak­en root in the land­scape.

Now, how­ev­er, the month of June is em­ploy­ee well­ness month in the US. And, since I am bi­ased to­wards work­place well-be­ing, I wish T&T would see the val­ue of this one. It is a won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress the ne­glect of men­tal health as a work­place con­cern for every em­ploy­ee. It is an oc­ca­sion to teach how health, in­clud­ing and es­pe­cial­ly, men­tal health as a work­place in­ter­ven­tion, can ben­e­fit the progress, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and bot­tom line of or­gan­i­sa­tions.

My deep con­vic­tions on this one have to do with the fact that, to my mind, the work­place nev­er af­ford­ed me op­por­tu­ni­ties to bal­ance my men­tal health con­cerns and con­di­tions with the high lev­els of cre­ativ­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty that I brought. Rather, steeped in the prej­u­dice and stig­ma that is so cul­tur­al­ly en­trenched, there were sur­rep­ti­tious oc­ca­sions of try­ing to oust me and my mad self from the work­place.

When you are an em­ploy­ee with a dis­closed men­tal health sta­tus peo­ple can eas­i­ly find a con­stituen­cy of like-mind­ed big­ots to make you seem mis­placed. Your every word, ac­tion, and de­ci­sion is judged through the lens of mad­ness and a case can eas­i­ly be made about your un­fit­ness. In fact, in T&T you do not even have to dis­close, just act strange once a month and see what hap­pens.

And if you do not be­lieve me then ask the psy­chi­a­trists who are al­ways in court to give tes­ti­mo­ny for their clients’ fit­ness to func­tion in the work­place.

Or just re­call the Cheryl Miller in­ci­dent of the last decade where she was in­car­cer­at­ed be­cause she was “be­hav­ing strange” in the work­place and some­one want­ed “to help.”

With the work­ing age be­ing 18-65, peo­ple spend most of their life at work. The work­place is a prime place to teach every as­pect of well-be­ing from ado­les­cent chal­lenges to age­ing is­sues. So, if we re­al­ly want to cel­e­brate some­thing that is not quite ours, I rec­om­mend Na­tion­al Em­ploy­ee Well­ness Month or Pro­fes­sion­al Well­ness Month.

Those in­volved in this ob­ser­vance say that pay­ing at­ten­tion to some of these el­e­ments of well­ness and well-be­ing en­sures bet­ter team­work, high­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and health­i­er lifestyles of em­ploy­ees. Cre­at­ing a thriv­ing en­vi­ron­ment where em­ploy­ees are hap­py to re­turn every work day is the bench­mark of suc­cess­ful or­gan­i­sa­tions glob­al­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to na­tion­al­to­day.com, “Pro­fes­sion­al Well­ness Month was cre­at­ed with the very idea to show­case the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing a sat­is­fy­ing work cul­ture and the di­rect cor­re­la­tion be­tween pro­fes­sion­al well­ness and a hap­py and stress-free in­di­vid­ual.”

The idea is, at the or­gan­i­sa­tion lev­el, to be proac­tive in im­ple­ment­ing pro­grammes and ac­tiv­i­ties to pro­mote well­ness, and at the em­ploy­ees’ lev­el, to “in­cen­tivise in­di­vid­u­als to take charge of their lives and adopt healthy habits that are im­per­a­tive for their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment.” https://na­tion­al­to­day.com/pro­fes­sion­al-well­ness-month/

There are on­line re­sources to help com­pa­nies, their hu­man re­source pro­fes­sion­als or oth­er staff or­gan­i­sa­tions to im­ple­ment sim­ple start-ups geared to­wards im­proved em­ploy­ee health and well-be­ing.

The Well­Right Blog is one of the ref­er­ences that I will plug here for their holis­tic out­look on broad ar­eas on how em­ploy­ers can fo­cus on em­ploy­ees’ well-be­ing in June.

Emo­tion­al well-be­ing: Teach mind­ful­ness–this builds emo­tion­al re­silience and helps em­ploy­ees to be present in the mo­ment and to sus­pend judg­ment while work­ing through dif­fi­cul­ties.

Fi­nan­cial well-be­ing: Pro­vide re­sources to em­ploy­ees in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial coun­selling to man­age life ex­pens­es, sav­ings, and re­tire­ment.

Phys­i­cal well-be­ing: In­tro­duce a well­ness chal­lenge. (In one or­gan­i­sa­tion where I have im­ple­ment­ed a work­place well-be­ing pro­gramme, we pro­vid­ed step count­ing watch­es and grouped em­ploy­ees for a step chal­lenge with prizes and brag­ging rights.)

So­cial well-be­ing: Host an event.

Oc­cu­pa­tion­al well-be­ing: Use coach­ing to help em­ploy­ees fo­cus on the fu­ture by as­sist­ing them in see­ing their own fu­ture with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion or in life in gen­er­al.

Pur­pose: Make mis­sion state­ments prac­ti­cal not just by set­ting goals but by re­vis­it­ing goals and re­new­ing com­mit­ments so em­ploy­ees can re­mem­ber their work­place pur­pose (www.well­right.com/blog).