The mental health response in Australia has; to date; been widely focused on signs, symptoms and responses. This has been a great start to the journey of change and has shifted our understanding and de-stigmatised the conversation.
We are in a different place today as a result of this educational process.
Yet today at any time, there is still one in five Australians experiencing a mental health condition – most commonly anxiety and depression. In addition and not currently discussed is that in any day:
7 people will successfully commit suicide
another 65 people will attempt it.
These remain sobering statistics and indicate that much more needs to change.
Workplaces are naturally part of this challenge because they are implicated in the stressors and pre-conditions whilst left to deal with aspects of the fallout.
Associate Professor James Burns from the University of Melbourne was part of the original team that set up Beyond Blue and today remains active in Mental Health public forums. Professor Burns has recently identified that although there is much greater community understanding of the signs and symptoms of mental illness, we are yet to affect greater behavioural (observable) change. She believes the change process is far too slow and it is now necessary to move from what she terms campaigning, to solving the actual challenge. So, solving the challenge involves actions beyond compliance or providing education programs. Professor Burns asserts that it’s about demonstrating leadership through the actions of governance (decision-making) and it needs to emanate from the top of organisations and across their wide spectrum.
We pose that an organisational response is the natural next step in this journey of change. Indeed it broadly follows the Safety Culture maturity model, although the actual descriptors are unique to the mental health prism. What is pertinent about the maturity model is that the space beyond compliance requires leadership and the engagement of followers to identify and solve the underlying issues.
This challenge echoes earlier problems such as the identification and management of hazards in the workplace. Real organisational change was only affected when its importance was signalled from the top through consistent and unwavering leadership actions.
We believe that the next steps along the journey of change for Mental Health are a design issue; that is, designing workplaces to be safe for people OR Safe Design for People. The backbone to our response is three intertwined concepts:
(i) decision-making,
(ii) wholeness and
(iii) purpose as described in the treatise of Re-inventing Organisations.
Come and talk to us about these ideas and the challenges ahead. We welcome conversation and a collaboration to coin the response necessary in support of change that Professor Burns and others have identified.
If you wish to discuss please contact me.