Mental Health in the Workplace

I may or may not have mentioned before that Occupational Therapy is a second career for me. I'm not sure if it has ever come up in this blog? At any rate, my previous career was working in Human Resources for a large corporation that shall remain nameless. I wasn't an executive... just a worker bee like many other corporate working bees in this world. I liked my job. There were many parts of it that I was good at, and I found great satisfaction in mastery of my work. I also had the fortune of working with a number of really great people over the years. I was paid well, I had good benefits, a pension plan, full-time status, stock options... and for 6 years I hated myself for every minute I was there.

The industry this corporation is in was going through a HUGE transition when I worked there. Stress levels were high. Toward the end the only constants were that we were being expected to do more and more with fewer and fewer resources, and big change in the way of executive turn-over and corporate restructuring was a monthly occurrence. I had to move to an unfamiliar city, I had a new commute of one hour each way if I didn't hit traffic, I was working crazy amounts of overtime, and I was profoundly lonely. The irony of it is that part of the reason I found it so hard to leave is because I could see how much better off I was than many of the other worker bees... those in sales and marketing, in management, in customer service... they had it far worse than I did.

In the end I did leave. I was lucky... not having a spouse or children; having a family who was supportive of my decision to change my life's course... I was able to make a change in support of my long-term health and well-being that many of my co-workers did not have the luxury to choose. So, even on the hardest days in school or when I'm lamenting the fact that I live on debt, I am grateful every second for the opportunity I've been given to do something else with my life.

My experience, and having witnessed the experiences of so many others in that corporate environment, has made me very aware of the toll workplace stress can take. Physical ailments, relationship strain, coworker bullying, weight gain, drug use, gambling, the compulsive need to attain material items to demonstrate the value of one's life, mounting debt... these are all common symptoms I have seen exhibited by employees who were struggling with the stress of a toxic work environment. And for some (I would argue many) the cost to their mental health was the greatest of all.

So, when I saw this little video by the CMHA it affected me deeply.

I hope you will take 2 minutes to have a look, and maybe even spread the word.

Thanks, :)SweetPea