Today is World Mental Health Day, as recognised by the WHO. The theme for 2022 is “Make mental health and wellbeing for all a global priority”. For details, please see:World Mental Health Day (who.int)
A wise man recently said, to paraphrase: “I can cope when things are tough at work and everything’s OK at home, and I can manage when there’s trouble at home but work is going OK. Where I struggle is when both are bad at the same time”. This must be true for most of us. However good we are at compartmentalising, our home life affects work and vice versa. At the same time, we are absolutely bombarded with bad news some days, and awful news other days. Probably there’s an innate tendency to over-focus on current plight and to forget how things must have felt, at the time, at certain worst moments in the past 100 years, but these past few years must surely stand out as some of the most volatile, uncertain, worrying and challenging any generation has faced? Climate change, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the death of our late Queen, inflation and the cost of living crisis, government in turmoil, etc… Even those of us not afflicted by a mental illness will struggle under the weight of those issues! This is then compounded by the speed and relentless nature of today’s news, which is delivered to us at cyber-speed via phones, tablets, laptops and TVs. It often feels as if there’s no escape, and this can become overwhelming. The pervasiveness of digital technology and the amplification of bad news, depressing content and inappropriate material by social media channels has been confirmed by the inquest into the tragic death of Molly Russell.
What can we do? The WHO’s theme is for all and global, but most of us can only influence and affect our immediate workplace, home and circle of friends. All of us at Weston Hospicecare, employees and volunteers alike, are united in a common goal to help patients and their loved ones through one of the hardest periods of their life. We can practice kindness, patience and tolerance towards each other, meaning around 150 employees and ~500 volunteers of us. We don’t all get along all the time, and conflict does occur which is completely normal and understandable (we’d be robots if it didn’t). It’s how we manage and resolve the conflict that counts, and I encourage you please to practice that extra bit of kindness and understanding towards each other at work, even when you don’t particularly feel like it, and even when you feel like it’s not particularly deserved! A strange thing happens when you show a little extra kindness to someone else against your inclination, it imbues you with a personal sense of warmth and wellbeing (and the person on the receiving end rather appreciates it too). Ripples of kindness and innate goodness travel outwards like waves on the sea, over a great distance and touching everything in their path. During the pandemic we saw wonderful examples of community action, local people looking out for one another, and a fresh appreciation of our interconnectivity and reliance. That didn’t seem to last very long out of lockdown once we again had to battle traffic jams, queues in shops and competition for resources. We’re now in the post-pandemic recovery phase (even as Covid still affects us) and we would do well to remember all the things we now enjoy and once again take for granted that were denied to us during lockdowns. I’m not sure I’ll personally buy one of those gratitude journals, but I will try to remember each day how very much I have to be grateful for. Kindness and gratitude in the workplace may not on their own heal existing mental illness, but they will certainly help good mental health to be maintained and will foster an environment where we have greater resilience and capacity to look out for one another, and therefore help those who most need it.
Heath and social care in the UK is at best creaking at the seams, and at worst is in crisis. The care settings in which we work, especially our front line clinicians and medics, are fraught with anxiety and frustration. There’s not much we can do to directly influence the overall problem, but we can certainly ensure that Weston Hospicecare is a warm, inclusive, loving and caring environment for our patients and for our staff equally. Each and every one of you should feel happy and relaxed about coming to work, and should experience our hospice as part of the solution. That’s the culture we want and need, and unless we are actively cultivating that culture every day, we are losing it because it doesn’t sustain itself – it takes proactive care and commitment.
There is nothing in my message today that you didn’t already know. I could also remind you that the key components of good mental health are regular exercise, good diet, a personal schedule that promotes sleep, spending time outside, switching off your digital appliances, practising forgiveness in relationships with family and friends, and so on and so forth. We all know this, but how many of us take full responsibility for our own mental health by applying what we already know? How quickly we get side-tracked, ambushed by chores, rushing from A to B, fighting deadlines, hooked on social media; a cacophony of noise competing for our attention. We seem to have lost the ability to just sit for a few minutes without the distraction of a phone, to take stock of our surroundings and how we are experiencing them, and the potent capability to slow down and order our own thoughts so that we come off autopilot and instead engage awareness and deliberate action. This is of course the power of mindfulness, whether or not promoted by daily meditation. Not for everyone, but powerful for many.
As I write, I’m aware of some colleagues who are struggling with their own wellbeing and mental health. Please know that we care deeply about you and we are here to support and help you, through the many resources available via our Staff Intranet, our People Services department, and our Mental Health First Aiders. Your work for the hospice can and should be one part of your path to recovery. Together, we can support each other through extraordinarily difficult times, give wonderful care to the users of our services, and have some fun while doing it.
I wish you all a happy and healthy Mental Health Day!