Mental health conditions have long been perceived as something that developed outside the workplace. The past couple of years, however, have made it clear to many that workplaces directly impact employee health in every way–not just spreading infection, but also increasing the potential for anxiety, depression, and other disorders.

Rachel Sullivan of Solid Ground Counseling, located at 290 NW Pinehurst Drive in Madison, wants to change the way businesses look at mental health. She noted that it’s challenging to open up the conversation because the lack of knowledge in the area of mental health “keeps people completely silent about it, which is just not the right answer.”

Instead, Sullivan says, “let’s have conversations where we can just admit that maybe we’re going into it a little bit ignorant, right? That’s completely okay and from that place we’ll figure out what we need to do to take us from ignorant to informed.”

20220726 105228 Sullivan enlisted the help of Madison consulting firm Flourish Consulting Services to get the word out to the public about the mental wellness workshop she developed to raise employers’ and employees’ awareness of how the outside world is impacting our mental health.

“I’m a mental health professional. That part I’m good at…I am also a business owner so I’ve definitely learned some of that piece of it but the reality is, there are pockets of ignorance regarding how [to] take this knowledge that I have and adequately get it outside of these walls so that people can access it and know that it’s even a thing, because that is not my area of expertise,” Sullivan said.

“I love being able to partner with different people to make sure that there’s knowledge about it because I think resources are only good if they’re known.”

In the mental wellness workshops, Rachel and her team discuss what stress is, how to recognize and be more mindful of its effects, identify and develop a beneficial self-care routine, and learn what coping skills are and how to effectively implement them. These workshops are designed for teams of all sizes and are becoming increasingly requested in both in-person and digital formats.

Sullivan considers the biggest issue people have faced over the past couple of years to be increased stress “across the board.” So, are mental health issues more pronounced now than pre-pandemic?

Sullivan’s response: “Definitely yes. I think that the need for mental health discussions around the workplace were definitely necessary prior to the pandemic. Now, however, I think that the workplace environment and overall conditions of employment require us to really start having these conversations. We have passed the point of ‘this is something that should be on our radar’ to ‘if it’s not, it’s detrimental.’”

Struggles with work-life balance and isolation, particularly for those who work from home or telework, can significantly impact mental health. Conditions are further complicated when teams lose members, forcing the remaining teammates to pick up the slack. “Overwork is something that we’ve heard a lot more of in the past 6-9 months because people are exiting roles, especially when employers aren’t prioritizing mental health and so it’s really common now for an individual to be juggling multiple jobs within the same company,” she explained.

According to Sullivan, telework presented a major mental health challenge early on. “It was all so new and the lack of support that employees were getting from employers on everything from proper expectations to work boundaries…employers getting in touch with people way late into the evening. If you were going to work and your office hours were 9-5, you wouldn’t be expected to be on call still at 11:00 at night.”

Because stressors are highly individualized, Sullivan explained that “finding out what that looks like for each individual person is a huge goal of the workshop. We spend the first portion of it helping them identify their unique areas of stress because everybody that’s sitting in it is their own person. Their home life and their particular job and their role within that job looks a little different but the overarching thing is [that] stress is basically at unmanageable levels for most people…everybody is stressed, so what are we going to do about it?”

The mental wellness training program doesn’t just benefit employees, but also employers. Sullivan noted that research shows that employees are more productive and more present at work when they are feeling mentally and physically safe in the workplace.

“We’ve got to make space for this conversation…being able to provide them with things like the mental wellness initiative really gives them the benefit of increased employee productivity, an overall healthier work environment, and on a revenue level, employees are taking less time off.”.

Sullivan explained that with built-in conversations and room for mental health can actually increase businesses’ bottom lines through lower absenteeism. Employees are often “just so mentally overwhelmed that they can’t take it, so they’re taking a sick day or something for mental health and chalking it up to be a physical health thing,” she said, adding that they aren’t really getting the support they need there either.

Sullivan added that there’s an additional benefit to employers normalizing the conversation and becoming more versed in supporting employee mental health: “Employees feel really valued and the environment feels like somewhere that they can really invest in. So this turnover really decreases significantly.”

One of Sullivan’s goals in the workshop is to teach people to recognize the specific sources of stress and identify whether there is an emotional or a behavioral response to those stressors. She noted that stress can manifest in a number of different ways, including restless thoughts, insomnia, and even digestive issues. By connecting the dots, it becomes possible to move forward on the approach to finding solutions.

The workshops have attracted a wide variety of participants. Sullivan did her first workshop with a salon in Decatur. “That was really cool because that’s a really high stress job. There’s a lot of negativity that gets brought in on those particular employees, the demand to work particular hours is challenging, and that home life balance is often very blurred, so we started there to just get our feet wet.”

Sullivan and her Solid Ground team do organizational and open workshops. Participants have included educators and support staff, a Fort Payne chamber-sponsored workshop with area business leaders, real estate agents, brokerage firms, business coaches, building contractors, and health professionals. “There’s really a good mix of who we’ve been able to reach so far, which has been cool,” she said.

Sullivan’s advice to employers to help them create a healthier workplace: “Understand and educate yourself around what exactly mental health is. I think that it’s really hard to bring in any kind of useful program for that particular business if there is a mis- or lacking understanding of what exactly mental health is.”

“It very frequently has a negative connotation, like we hear the term mental health and almost automatically go to this negative place like ‘oh, you’re sick.’ Mental health, by definition, is just the health of our mental state. And I talk about it existing on a spectrum, like from illness to wellness, so depending on how much support and understanding you have you’re going to fall somewhere on this,” she continued.

Sullivan emphasized the need for employers to remember that making room for conversations in the workplace about mental health is “about realizing that people that are in here completing tasks everyday are humans first. We’ve gotta understand that piece. And so I think that education around what mental health is is step one.”

Key to promoting a healthy work environment for employees is following through on promises: “Anyone can drop a great paragraph on their website saying whatever they would like for it to, but the environment feels different when a place focuses on mental wellness and has a legitimate understanding of the importance in conversation…I believe that it’s something that can evolve, even in a very old school, traditional work environment,” Sullivan stated.

“I obviously believe in change because that’s a huge part of the therapy process, so I believe that the process can happen, that employers can have lots of options for employees that are really supportive around mental health in the workplace. We have a tremendous amount of work to do but I believe that’s possible.”