“What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but it empties today of its strength. It does not make you escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with it if it comes.” ― Raymond L. Cramer

Anxiety is a future-oriented state of mind. So instead of worrying about what’s going to happen, “reel yourself back to the present,” says Tamar Chansky.

“It’s easier to recognise someone’s physical well being than their emotional well being. We also find it much easier to engage in conversations about physical health, but often find talking about emotional well being to be more of a challenge. The implications of decreased emotional well being are detrimental as it can contribute to mental health and stress concerns, it is important to ensure good staff well being by encouraging conversation in the workplace “. NHS Employers.

Mental health as a topic and mental health distress is becoming far more acceptable to talk about. And research has shown that we are experiencing a growing problem in the UK. It is important for managers and colleagues
spot signs of mental health, think about how they might approach somebody who they feel might be struggling.

The statistics show that one in four adults in the UK will suffer some form of mental distress, be that anxiety or stress, every single year. And the Mental Health Foundation also say that we lose over 70 million working days in the UK as a result of these sorts of illnesses. So we owe it to ourselves and our colleagues to be able to spot those symptoms and help them do something about it. Jobs, finances, relationship difficulties– all of those things can really send somebody in a downward spiral.

How do we spot the potential for mental health distress in anybody that we
work with? And it’s really important for us to say that everybody is different. So in any given situation, something that may really, really stress me out, somebody else may cope with, no problem. I mean, it’s often about what else is going on in my life that could tip me over that edge or not. So we all have very different coping thresholds.

But some of the common symptoms of mental health distress are quite easy to spot.

So for example, we could find that somebody is behaving uncharacteristically. So maybe somebody who has been used to being seen as pretty easy going suddenly becoming very angry. Or somebody that has being quite outgoing in the office, suddenly becoming quite withdrawn– so a marked difference in behaviour.

Tiredness, people just aren’t sleeping well and turning up for work looking and feeling very, very tired. Maybe they’re not taking as much care over their appearance as they used to do, or not eating as they used to do.

Increased absence, not in work as often. And maybe less subtly we see things in the quality of the work– more mistakes, reduced productivity, and just not engaging with people anymore. So there’s lots of signs that we can look out for, but enough to say that they are potential. They’re not definite
signs that somebody is definitely struggling. They’re just potential.

The other thing to think about is change and the impact it has on people, because lots and lots of organisations are going through restructures, mergers, changing even in processes that some people can deal with quite
happily, and other people, if they’re feeling under pressure anyway and then this change comes along on top, could be just too much.

Good information technology is already critical to good clinical care. It provides an effective, reliable and sustainable ways to record and communicate information between patients, professionals and organisations. Good mental health services are now recognised as vital to the health of the nation. The development of advanced Mental Health data collections are important early steps and future combination of technologies such as, smartphones, sensors, genomics and artificial intelligence, will build on this foundation to achieve widespread and meaningful impact. #Mental Health #Health Care Technology.