Businesses

MENTAL HEALTH: IT'S PART OF EVERY WORKPLACE

Companies that proactively address overall mental health in the workplace can realize significant benefits. Mental health friendly practices can bring greater productivity, reduced insurance costs, and improved retention. They can, in fact, affect the entire culture of the company.

Available to the business community are a booklet for top executives and a complementary toolkit for human resource personnel and managers. These materials help get the message to employers that mental health is a part of every workplace and help employers spread the message to their workforce.

A Mental Health Friendly Workplace: It's in Every Company's Best Interest

The booklet invites business leaders to take a serious look at the role of their employees' mental health and how it relates to both their well-being and the bottom line. It presents:

• An overview of a mental health friendly workplace
• The benefits to business of addressing employee mental health
• descriptions of mental health friendly policies and practices
• Examples of businesses that are modeling these practices
• The resources available in the no-cost toolkit for addressing mental health in the workplace

Workplaces That Thrive: A Resource for Creating Mental Health Friendly Work Environments

The toolkit contains information and tools for human resource personnel and managers to use in developing a mental health friendly workplace. The toolkit includes:

• A brief introduction to the status of mental health in the U.S. workplace and the challenge of stigma and discrimination toward persons with mental illnesses
• Elements of a mental health friendly workplace for making a preliminary assessment of the current situation in a workplace
• In-depth portraits of actual mental health friendly workplaces
• Descriptions of policies and promising practices for implementation in the workplace
• Training modules for supervisors
• A CD-ROM with ready-to-use internal communication materials for employees (i.e., a poster, print ads, and articles for newsletters)

This article for workplace publications features a woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who has remained a successful employee with the support of supervisors and coworkers. The article publicizes the EBI training package.