Improving Wellbeing

Mental Health

The cost of mental health problems is significant: to individuals and their families, to the performance of businesses and to wider society.

• Suicide is the most common cause of death for men aged 20-49 years in England and Wales (ONS, 2015) 
• In 2015/16 stress accounted for 37% of all work related ill health cases and  45% of all working days lost due to ill health (HSE 2016) 
• The total number of working days lost due to this condition in 2015/16 was 11.7 million days. This equated to an average of 23.9 days lost per case. (HSE 2016)

Those employers who value their people are playing an increasing role in providing support in this area and I have been working with a number of organisations to explore how we can improve, maintain, and optimise psychological wellbeing.   

There are two different levels at which to address wellbeing within organisations:

• Addressing the culture, helping people to flourish:  I work in partnership  with organisations to understand how people are feeling, and to design and evaluate interventions to create a healthy culture to help people be at their best.
• To provide support at an individual level – education about how our brains work  (neuroscience), strategies to keep healthy and strong, and support for when times  are tough.