 A bit of a tough question, but here it is. The fact that mental health is everywhere, that Michael Phelps is talking about it on television, that Naomi Osaka was interviewed at the US Open, that the cover of Time magazine deals with John Federman, the junior senator from Pennsylvania who has battled severe depression. Let me ask you what seems like a naive question. Is the fact that it's everywhere a good thing? I'm torn a little on this. I love that there's more awareness about it. That's fantastic. It's something that traditionally people never spoke about. It was under the rug. The problem that I have is that there's so many myths and misnomers out there about it. And so while there might be awareness, everybody thinks they're an expert in it, but it's a lot more complex than we really understand. So there are a few myths. For example, there were one we were talking about that once you have a mental health problem, you never recover. There is no basis. There's no scientific basis, exactly. First person I've ever met who said that he used to have a lot of dust. But I'm not the only one. There's tens of thousands like me. In actual fact, when you look at the research and the studies, up to 68% of people that have got a mental health diagnosis, serious enough to have a mental health diagnosis, recover. Really? Yeah. What if somebody were to say to you, I don't want to deny or dispute the validity of the diagnosis, but what if somebody were to say to you, the fact that you've recovered means you were never really bipolar in the first place. I would say that there's not a strong argument for that. It's wishful thinking. And it's interesting because sometimes people like to compare a mental health problem to a physical problem. If I said to you, I had a broken bone and now that I haven't anymore, I've recovered, would you question it? Right. So why do we question it with mental health? That's a very interesting question. But you are not denying that a legitimate clinical diagnosis of bipolar exists or of clinical depression or of schizophrenia. Absolutely not. I'm not so much interested in the diagnosis but in the suffering that goes with that. And there's an intense suffering and people can get lost in that suffering. And this is where we have to be very careful when a person has got a severe mental health problem, they can get lost in the suffering and the extreme result of that can be death, which is suicide. But in between that, there can also be a lot of brain damage from the medications that they take. There can be a loss of income. There can be the loss of a partnership because sometimes living with a person with a mental health problem is impossible for some people. There can be the loss of the impact on the children when their parents have got a mental health issue. Can you imagine how confusing that is for a child? Absolutely, absolutely. So what we do is it's vital for our society because it impacts the community. It helps communities thrive when mental health is approached properly from a strength perspective, from a recovery perspective. Then we see that communities, workplaces, they start thriving, morale improves, resiliency improves. To be clear though, when you talk about communities and workplaces, you too, in the Workplace Mental Health Institute, which I wanna make sure I get right, you too don't actually deal with or encourage these companies to deal with severe mental illness, bipolar, schizophrenia, clinical depression. You deal with mental health at another level, although I do wanna come back to what you said about suffering. So we're bouncing around a little bit, but just to be clear, you don't go to the extreme. We're very clear on that. Whenever we go into an organization and we're training their staff, it's very clear that this is not counseling, this is not therapy. Although if you need it, we strongly encourage you go and get whatever's gonna be helpful for you. But it's very much focused on how do we understand what we're talking about when we say mental health? How do we identify if one of our colleagues around us might be struggling? Cause we spend a lot of time at work. Can I put you on the spot? Go for it. What are we talking about when we say mental health? Well, that depends on the eye of the beholder, really. And that's another thing that we teach is that there are different lenses and filters to this. Some people view mental health from a very medical kind of approach. Others approach it from a spiritual perspective. You know, it's a transformation. It's a spiritual crisis. And then you can transform through that. Others view it as a natural coping mechanism in response to trauma. So we need to really look at mental health from these different diverse perspectives so that we're not judging other people and telling them at work, you know, take your meds and you'll be fine. Or, you know, it's because of what happened to you or trying to, they're a pie as we say, our colleagues or our employees, but instead being more respectful of those different experiences and guiding people to go and get the support from the trained professionals. But you need to know how to do that in a workplace, how to have those conversations. And I want to get into that more, but I'd love to hear how you define mental health. I define mental health as an existential suffering that people go through. It is not uncommon for the human experience to be difficult. Life is hard. Growing up is hard. Maturing is hard. And that causes serious emotional problems, especially when we live in a very complex society and we do live in a very complex society. And in many senses, our society is artificial. We're going to a workplace and we sit next to colleagues that we didn't choose as colleagues and we spend eight hours, 10 hours with these people. And then sometimes we have a boss that we don't really understand and hasn't got a relationship with us. And we don't know whether we like them or not, or they like us. So there's that uncertainty as well. And that can cause a lot of emotional problems. For me, mental health is about the suffering that goes with being human at an extreme level. But we play at the WHO, we play, we work in the space between what is a normal person to up to the point of a severe mental health issue. That's where we recommend to people. Now it's time to give it up to the experts. But in workplaces, we teach people how to avoid a mental health issue. The techniques that you need in order to travel through this difficult life. And then that produces the resiliency that we need. And then if there are any other mental health issues in the workplace, how do we manage them? As long as they're not severe. You just said a couple of things that really, really intrigued me. Actually, everything both of you have said. Hi, I'm Emmy Golding, Director of Psychology for the Workplace Mental Health Institute. We hope you liked the video. If you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up. We have more and more videos being released each week. So when you subscribe, you'll get a notification letting you know when a new one's just been published. So make sure to hit that subscribe button and don't miss out on this vital information for yourself, your colleagues and your loved ones.