Since the pandemic began, workers and leaders have become more stressed out, anxious, burned out and totally disengaged at a higher rate than ever before. In fact, according to a survey by Harvard Business Review, 89% of respondents said they have experienced a decline in their workplace well-being. Add to that, employees are quitting their jobs at a record pace. In this new talk, Sheila Hamilton, award-winning journalist and CEO of Beyond Well Solutions, a business that helps companies create customized media programming to help individuals recognize the signs of depression, anxiety and other behavioral disorders, shares why the pandemic has forced mental health to become a workplace priority. “From the CEO to mid-level management to frontline employees — everyone is suffering,” Hamilton says. “As humans, we cannot continue to challenge our bodies and our minds this way. If you’re looking at this in terms of human capital, even the highest performers are reporting these stress levels, and it’s just not sustainable. So, supporting mental health as an employer is critical.” In addition to giving you the warning signs to look for when it comes to burnout, Hamilton shares individual tools and techniques for resilience and well-being, as well as micro-adjustments that organizations can make that lead to big changes.

Sheila’s story of her family’s mental health crisis illustrates that mental illness doesn’t care about your bank account, your social status or the number of followers you have on Facebook. Sheila was at the height of a highly awarded and visible journalism career when her husband had his first psychotic break. How Sheila handled this very public persona at the time dealing with a highly sensitive private crisis is key, “It’s not them, it’s us.” Hamilton says, “Every one of us is on a mental health continuum, and with enough trauma, lack of sleep, toxic stress and the genetic underpinnings of brain illness, we can all suffer mental illness. We can also recover. That’s what is missing in the conversation.”   

System wide efforts to become trauma informed will improve health outcomes and reduce the long term costs of unaddressed traumatic experiences. The most common causes of trauma are parental abandonment, divorce, substance abuse, mental illness, sexual, physical and emotional abuse, neglect, a serious accident, natural disaster or acts of war. With multiple experiences, the risk increases for anxiety, depression, alcoholism, suicide attempt, major diseases and disassociation. Ten years after the Adverse Childhood Experiences study linked trauma to risk factors for leading causes of adult mortality, new research links childhood trauma to higher rates of mental health problems and obesity in children.

Problem: David’s care (and the care of most other patients in the last decade) has been lacking, impersonal and driven by a pharmaceutical approach to healing a crisis of mind, body and spirit.

Solution: Oregon’s Unity Project: a model for the nation, with four healthcare systems coming together to provide patient centered behavioral and psychiatric care. Medication is seen as a screwdriver, not a jackhammer, the patient is part of the recovery process, and therapists reach to find coping methods that might work for the participant’s individual history of trauma.

In every moment, we are choosing: lightness or dark, truth or lies, vulnerability or detachment. Our family’s mental health crisis forced me to ask if I’d been living with as much openness, and as much vulnerability as I should have. When David’s body was found, I realized I had one choice: recede into the shame and stigma he suffered from, or choose honesty, openness and truth. I chose the latter and it has reframed the entire way I view life. As humans, we are charged with helping one another through the worst periods of our lives. Asking for help offers the antitode to shame and stigma because it allows others to respond with empathy, with love and compassion.  Let people show how good they can be. Ask for help.