Mental Health: The Other Pandemic

Corporations around the world are confronting flagging mental health among their employees. The world’s largest wellness company, Johnson & Johnson, has since 2016 had a mental-health ambassador, Craig Kramer, who has spurred incredible changes within and without his employer. In conversation with Medcan’s chief people and growth officer, Bronwen Evans, Kramer describes the crisis of mental health in the pandemic, and the opportunity to create long-term change in the way employers manage the mental wellness of their employees. 

https://www.eatmovethinkpodcast.com/podcast/ep-64-mental-health-the-other-pandemic

LINKS:

Video: TEDxJnJ talk about Kramer’s mental wellness journey.

Article: My First Two Years as J&J’s Global Mental Health Ambassador

Other podcasts featuring Kramer: On a podcast called Global Health Pursuit, Kramer argued that we need a militant mindset to drive change for global health care. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. 

 Video: “The Mental Health Moment”, a talk for the U.S. Health Action Council. 

Resource: The World Economic Forum has compiled a list of articles and research to arm people looking for statistics and best practices to encourage mental wellness in workplaces. Check it out. 

Medcan provides mental health-promoting services for clients featuring appointments with a team of psychologists led by Dr. Jack Muskat. Learn more. 

INSIGHTS:

File under best practices: Consider creating an employee resource group for those living with mental illness. When Kramer first began advocating to improve mental health care, he gave a talk about what he was doing for J&J employees and included an appeal for volunteers. Soon he had 400 of them — about 390 more than he had expected to get. Kramer believes it may have been one of the first employee resource groups created within a company for people who live with mental illness (which is one out of four people, Kramer says), or for those who are acting as caregivers to those who live with mental illness (about two out of four people, Kramer says). The group’s also become the fastest-growing employee resource group in J&J history, featuring representation from 79 countries around the world. Other employers have picked up the idea and now there’s a fraternity of these groups working together to address workplace mental health. (Time code 7:00)

Silver linings: There’s a positive side to the mental health struggles people are experiencing through the pandemic: “Before the epidemic hit, we were getting a lot of traction, a lot of openness to talk about this,” Kramer says, “but there were still a lot of people who didn't get it or, or thought that it was, you know, something that was really just about people being weak in character and not really having an illness of any kind.” The pandemic has opened the eyes of the people who didn’t get it, according to Kramer. Now, he says, “it's hard to find somebody who doesn't understand that their own mental health can really fluctuate based on the external environment, but also on your own internal genetic and family history. It's made this conversation a lot easier to have. And as we compete for resources, to address mental health, we are getting a lot more traction.” (12:25)

Argument: For employers, Kramer believes caring for employee mental wellness is smart business. “Numerous studies from the World Bank and others have shown that every dollar you spend on mental health promotion in the workplace leads to five to 10, maybe more, dollars of return, because mental illness is the leading cause of disability worldwide,” Kramer says. In the workplace, according to Kramer, this manifests as absenteeism, turnover, disability, short-term disability, long-term disability and something called presenteeism — when you show up to work but your head is not really in the game. “I can tell you,” Kramer says, “in the thick of my daughter's struggles… it's hard to go to work and really focus when you're worried that your loved one might not make the day or you're worried that the care they're getting is not really appropriate.” (13:23)

Thought-provoking metaphor: Kramer’s dad recently had cancer. He’s survived, and in the experience, Kramer was struck by the difference between what exists for those with cancer, and the way mental illness is treated. “The primary care doctor knew a lot about [the cancer] and stayed with us on the journey,” Kramer says. “[He] actually joined phone calls with the specialists, the oncologist, the radiologist, the surgeon. There were decades of studies of this particular kind of cancer. And we were able to get first, and second, and third opinions that all kind of lined up and gave us a good sense of where we were.” Mental health is very different, says Kramer. “Primary care doctors know very little about mental health,” he says. “And so they're reluctant to help you on the journey, or unable to help you in the journey. A lot of the specialists are freelancing, and using their own approaches, some of which work and some of which don't. It's not driven by data and rigorous clinical studies by and large. So as a consumer, it's hard to know where to start.” Kramer believes that the world that we want to create is one where mental health is treated just like cancer, or heart disease. (19:00)

Another thought-provoking metaphor: Kramer believes the drive for marriage equality forms a template for how things may proceed for the drive to improve mental health care. ”For a long time, our society did not support [marriage equality],” says Kramer. “But there came a point where enough of us knew somebody we loved, who couldn’t marry the person they loved, [so] that almost overnight” things changed. “And you know, we're using the same strategy for mental health, we want to raise these voices.” Kramer believes we face an enormous opportunity now. “Some people call this the mental health moment,” he says. “Now is the time. All the pieces are aligned in the right place for us to make a lot of progress, but we've got to push. I think if you wait, other things will crowd out this issue.” (24:45)