Mental Health and Work (Last Updated On: ) Mental Health and Work World Mental Health Day, 10 October 2000 Unemployment, work overload, work-family balance, stress, burnout…. Work is a central fact in many people’s lives and can affect their entire outlook. It has great relevance to mental health. Employers who care promote healthful work practices. In work places with a less enlightened approach workers may experience stress. Modern technology, by speeding up communications, often adds to strain instead of making work easier. If an employee experiences mental health problems, the situation often has to be addressed by the employer as well as the person concerned. “Our view is that mental health is a decent work issue.” – Juan Somavia, ILO Director-General When an individual has a serious mental illness his or her potential as a worker is often denied. Though the person may recover, or reach a point where the illness is under control, entering or re-entering the work force may be extremely difficult. Discrimination can last a lifetime. As many types of chronic mental illness start at a young age, the loss to individuals and the social burden created is immense. “Decent work is the first step out of poverty and social exclusion.” – G. Hultin, ILO Executive Director, Employment Sector These issues and many more were examined in detail at a Symposium on the afternoon of 10 October 2000, World Mental Health Day, held jointly by the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization, and WFMH. The conference was opened by ILO Director-General Juan Somavia and WFMH President Ahmed El Azayem. Mr. Somavia spoke about how mental health fits the ILO’s campaign for “decent work.” Noting that workplace issues spread far beyond the place of employment, he pointed to their effect on families, sometimes even contributing to family violence. He discussed how insecurity and uncertainty caused by the global economy create widespread, stressful problems for workers. Drawing attention to discrimination against the mentally ill in the workplace, he added that “the most important thing that we need is to have a caring eye.” The panel of speakers introduced by WFMH Secretary General Marten deVries included Derek Yach, WHO’s Executive Director for Non-Communicable Diseases and Mental Health; Benedetto Saraceno, M.D., Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Dependence at WHO; Barbara Murray, ILO Senior Specialist in Vocational Rehabilitation; G. Hultin, ILO Executive Director, Employment Sector; and Assane Diop, ILO Executive Director, Social Protection Sector. The program featured a presentation from Gaston Harnois, M.D., co-author of the new WHO-ILO publication “Mental Health and Work.” Among other comments, he said that “it is no longer acceptable that the rate of employment of people with mental health disabilities is so low….People with mental health problems are at the very bottom of the disabled list.” WFMH closed the program with a presentation by Bill Wilkerson, a Board policy adviser and chair of the Canadian Business Roundtable for Mental Health, who announced steps to launch a WFMH Corporate Advisory Council for Mental Health to bring the issue to the business community. He introduced a video made by the Rt. Hon. Brian Wilson, Canada’s former Finance Minister and a former governor of the IMF and World Bank, who made a powerful statement about the importance of giving mental health a meaningful place on the business and economic agenda. The symposium ended with another video made by Herschel Ezrin, the Chief Executive Officer of GPC, a Canadian public relations firm strongly committed to supporting the cause of mental health. New York event The ILO’s support for World Mental Health Day did not end with the conference and symposium at its Geneva headquarters. Immediately after these events its Senior Rehabilitation Adviser, Susan Parker (a former Commissioner for Mental Health in the State of Maine), flew to New York to address the World Mental Health Day conference on “Emerging Issues in Mental Health and Work” arranged on 12 October at UN headquarters by the NGO Committee on Mental Health. The four-hour program featured seven speakers on social and workplace issues. New ILO and WHO publications In conjunction with World Mental Health Day the ILO released important studies of the mental health policies and programs which affect the workforces of Finland, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States. WHO and the ILO jointly released another study, “Mental health and work: Impact, issues and good practices,” co-authored by Gaston Harnois and Phyllis Gabriel. Both organizations and WFMH sent out press releases, and the combined media effort drew broad international attention to the new publications and the problems they examine. WFMH is indebted to the Canadian public relations company GPC and to its Board Adviser Bill Wilkerson for arranging its share of the successful media campaign. The new publications from the ILO and WHO emphasize the increasing prevalence of mental health problems in the workplace, and the rising costs for governments, employers and individuals. Anywhere from 3-4% of GNP is spent on mental health problems in the European Union. In the US, the national spending associated with treatment of depression ranges between US$30 billion and US$44 billion. In many countries, early retirement due to mental health difficulties is increasing to the point where they are becoming the most common reason for allocating disability pensions. In the US, clinical depression has become one of the most common illnesses, affecting one in ten working age adults each year, resulting in a loss of approximately 200 million working days each year. In Finland, over 50% of the workforce experiences some kind of stress-related symptoms. In Germany, depressive disorders account for almost 7% of premature retirements, and depression-related work incapacity lasts about two and a half times longer than incapacity due to other illnesses; the annual volume of production lost because of absenteeism related to mental health disorders is estimated at over 5 billion DM annually. In the UK each year nearly three out of every ten employees experience mental health problems; depression is such a common problem that at any given time one in every 20 working-age Britons is experiencing major depression; work-related stress has been identified as the second largest occupational health problem in the UK. Public health statistics in Poland indicate growing numbers of people, especially individuals suffering from depressive disorders, receiving mental health care, a trend that can be related to the country’s socio-economic transformation and resulting increases in unemployment, job insecurity and declining living standards. For information about the five ILO studies on mental health in the workplace, or the executive summary of the studies prepared by Phyllis Gabriel and Marjo-Riitta Liimatainen, contact ILO Target Groups Unit, 4 route des Morillons, CH-1211 Geneva 22, Switzerland. Tel: 41 22 799 8173. Fax: 41 22 799 6130. Email:[email protected] The five studies are available on the Internet at the ILO web site: www.ilo.org; click on “Publications” then click on “Disability and work.” Also contact the ILO Target Groups Unit for information about the WHO-ILO study “Mental health and work: impact, issues and good practices” by Gaston Harnois and Phyllis Gabriel.