 Hello, I'm Emily Golding, Director of Psychology for the Workplace Mental Health Institute and I'm here with our CEO, Peter Diaz. Hi. Today with World Mental Health Day just around the corner, we wanted to take a moment to sit down and take a look at the current state of affairs when it comes to mental health in the world right here, right now, today in October 2022. So Peter and I are going to be diving into some pretty big questions here about well-being of the planet from a very global perspective, right down to personal well-being and what you as an individual can do for yourself and your communities. So from the macro right down to the micro and everything in between, it's a very broad spectrum and we're excited about that. But before we dive in, we do want to acknowledge a few things. Firstly, Peter and I come from very different backgrounds in pretty much every way possible, besides being different genders, coming from different cultural backgrounds. We have different personalities, different life experiences. We also have different training professionally. I'm a licensed psychologist, but please don't hold that against me. I've also studied in a range of different fields beyond the scopes of traditional psychology. So I incorporate a lot of that into my perspective. Whereas Peter's professional background is as a clinical social worker. So he takes a more systems approach to looking at what things support and perhaps detract from mental health and well-being. And he also has his personal life experience, having been diagnosed and recovered from a severe mental illness. Bipolar. Bipolar disorder. Yeah. So we'll incorporate that into our discussion. So just in case you're worried that perhaps we'll interrupt each other. It will happen. Talk over the top of each other. Perhaps even disagree. It will happen. And it's okay. In fact, we're in favour of differences. We love diversity and that includes diversity of opinions and being able to look at those and discuss them. In fact, we think it's crucial that people these days are able to have different perspectives of opinions and be able to have respectful conversations about them. We need to conversation. Yeah. Do we have permission to speak freely? Well, yes, we do. We're giving ourselves permission. So let's dive in and I want to start with the very first question. Big one for you, Peter. What is the current state of mental health in the world? Oh, I knew you were going to ask me that one. So I prepared for that one. Oh, really? Yes. Yes. I had a little very quick look. Although I was already aware of all the state, I just wanted to have some look at some studies right now of what's going on. There's a UK study, the UCL COVID social study, and it says that it suggests that the cumulative effect of repeated pandemic waves and lockdowns may have led to an increased and prolonged negative effect on the mental health and well-being of some groups within the population. And I want to highlight that bit of the prolonged negative effect. We haven't had necessarily that happen before as badly as it's happening now. So this is from the UK. In the US, very worrying finding is one in five children will have a mental illness by the age of 18. Again, we haven't had this so bad, but for the last two and a half years, it has gotten worse. In fact, we have a very good video on our channel. You can watch after this one, of course. And it's an interview that you did with Laurie Vance. She's a specialist on self-harm. If you have girls in your family, where as nieces or daughters or anything like that, there's an epidemic, there's an epidemic of self-harm with young girls, and she makes some very interesting points. So that's something good to watch. And now Australia, of course, we love Australia throughout 2020 and 2021, research has gathered evidence revealing heightened psychological distress during the pandemic. Now remember, for some people, it hasn't finished. And we're going into different type of collective pain now, which in some cases is financial. We're looking at financial and also we're still being scared around the physical stuff. And there was a rise in the use of mental health services, which continues and an increase in psychological distress during 2020. So it doesn't look good. There's always a bit of a delay with the research that happens. We're getting some 2020 data now. I would love to say that we have improved, but we haven't. If anything, the anecdotal and the studies show that it's getting worse. In some countries, there has been an increase of suicide. In other countries, it doesn't seem to have correlated with that. But definitely what is very worrying is that young people have been particularly affected by these two and a half years. So as adults, it's good that we listen to this and we do something about it. It's not about you anymore. It's not about you. It's about the next generation. What kind of a world are we living for them? And this is my concern here. And this is why I'm excited about having a completely frank and honest discussion. If it offends me, it doesn't really matter. If it offends you, I'm sorry, it's not about you. It's about how do we help other people? And everybody doesn't think the same. I was just going to say, I think one of the challenges is we really we want it to be over so much that we're saying, you know, it's all good. It's all finished now. Let's move on. Get on with life. But this research is showing that prolonged effect. It's and as you said, it's still there are still restrictions happening in some places. And even those that don't have restrictions anymore, there's still a healing to be done from everything that people have been through. And sometimes we can't even articulate what we've been through. It takes some time. So yeah, I think it's we need to be really careful not to say everything's fine now. Let's move on. Get over it. Yeah. And you make a very good point, especially with guys with men. It's well known. It takes us a couple of years to to work out what's going on before we can talk about it. People say, why don't they go to therapy and talk about it? Well, some people don't work like that, especially if the men sometimes they take a lot longer to be able to trust a person to know that when they speak, they're going to be listened to. So yeah, we've got to give them time. So what do you think are the biggest challenges facing workplaces, communities and individuals right now? Well, the one we're talking about, for example, it's a very big challenge. How do you talk about things that are so difficult to talk about in an area where sometimes people get offended and we need to talk about those things, even if I get offended, it's still an important conversation because the fact that we tell people to shut up is not good enough. They still think and they still feel the way they do. So we need to encourage conversation. We need to encourage differences of opinion in order to have a collective well-being. There's too much focus on the individual well-being and not the collective one. Whereas we forget sometimes that it's a happy society that produces happy individuals. Of course, the reverse is also sometimes true, but we're missing that point. And then that's one of the important points that we're missing because there are other things that are impacting in our world right now. Hang on, just to capture what you're saying here. So one of the biggest challenges then is this trend where people can't speak. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, absolutely. We tell people if you have a mental health issue, make sure that you talk, but only say the things that I want to hear. They're politically correct, right? If I'm being bothered by something that is not politically correct, we don't want to know because that makes you a bad person. So political correctness is a big problem for mental health well-being. It's a huge problem for mental health well-being. I'm not saying, obviously, I'm not saying that we should just go and insult people or offend them because we can. No, that's ridiculous. We shouldn't do that. But we also shouldn't hold back from giving a gift of our wisdom or our opinion simply on the basis that someone else has put a rule that we shouldn't talk about it. Actually, voicelessness is a big element of mental illness. Absolutely. So when people feel they can't talk, that is really bad for the mental health. And I guess the challenge is that how have we got to this point? I think it's with good intentions. I think we don't want to upset people. We want to look after people. We want to support well-being. So then we start to create rules about how to do that and shoot us off in the foot. And the thing that's coming up for me is what I was told as a child. I'm sure many people were. And what we've shared with our son, that little saying, sticks and stones can break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Which is a good saying. And it's interesting that when did words become dangerous to the point where now we can't say words, we can't speak, we can't express. And we know taboo words are not useful. They do limit the human spirit. And it's not just words, obviously. It's ideas and concepts and that debate and discussion. So we have reached a point, especially through the pandemic, we've seen a lot of censorship. And censorship just basically means you have an opinion, I don't want to hear, therefore I will call the name and you shut up. This is really, really, really wrong from a mental health perspective and from an ethical perspective to shut a person up because they don't fit into what we want to hear. And in therapy, what we do in therapy, when we are having therapy with clients, is we allow them to say anything. Because it is in the process of saying anything that people process and digest things and they get better. So as a society, it's very much the same. We need to be able to talk about things in order to improve our collective mental health. And that's what makes it a safe space, the fact that you can play anything here, this is a safe space. So being back in a teddy bear is not the safe space. It is the ability to be able to talk with a thing. Yeah. So what do you think are the biggest challenges that we are facing? Well, besides what I mentioned before, I think one of the ones that I'm very worried about at the moment is trauma. It's become really popular. It's almost like a fashion. We had for about a decade the fashion of bipolar disorder diagnosis. Now we have the fashion of trauma. And people are fascinated by trauma because they think the trauma is something that happens to you and you have nothing to do with it, which it can't be further from the truth. You're not saying that we haven't been through something traumatic, right? No, we have been collectively through something traumatic. My concern is that people feel that they are completely at the mercy of events, whereas what we know from psychology, which is what we call a thorough psychological studies, is that trauma is a process in which the person has to participate in it. So for example, I'll give you an example. If a person is already feeling depressed and something happens that is really negative and they have a reaction to that, that can be then traumatic. But if that person is feeling happy and something really negative happens, it's very rare for an individual to experience trauma. Forget pandemic, apart from that, before that, 75% of people will go through something that could be considered a potentially traumatic event or experience, but only a minute proportion of those people will go on to have a post-traumatic stress response. Exactly. And what I'm seeing now is there's a lot of people believing that they are that minority. Yeah. That they are that minority. And that is concerning because it is quite rare. It is not the norm. You know, most people will not experience trauma for the rest of their lives. Sometimes when you're feeling bad today, it's not because you experienced trauma before, it's because you're feeling bad today. Yeah. Today is a shitty day. And you know, sometimes you do have bad days. Don't you think there can be a tendency sometimes for people to kind of point score with, like, with the victim mentality? Oh, this happened to me when I get attention, now I get support. There's a need for that sort of drama, I guess. And so the more negatives you can come up with. And in psychology, validation is good. Yes, that's true. Most of the time, not always. You've got to be careful how much you validate someone's. If somebody is caught up in the drama and you validate the drama, then you get more drama. And that's not good for the person. If you're validating a person's trying to get better, if you're validating a person's experience, that's OK. If you're listening to their story, that's all right. If you do it once, you do it twice. If you do it 10 times, that's not good anymore. Now we have a person that is in a cycle reliving, or sometimes what I've seen, and you have seen that as well, I'm sure, is that they're creating their own trauma by repeating a story and making them even worse than when it happened. Absolutely. And sometimes therapists have got a lot to answer for. That's true. Because they've created salient points in people's minds about something that happened in the past which didn't bother them at the time. And they've told, well, this is why you have a crappy life today because of that. And that's one of the things. And forever more because you can't go home and do the past. And that's one of the things that I've seen that is, it's really dangerous. And it's impacting workplaces too. Conversation is one that we have in our vicarious trauma training, which has been the most popular course over the past year. It's a brilliant course. And it's great because it's great that workplaces are acknowledging, as you said, the collective trauma that we have been through. And coming at it from an approach of how do we build resilience? How do we build emotional fitness? How do we move forward beyond that rather than getting stuck in that? Well, that's why resiliency is so important, isn't it? Absolutely. The personal skills that we bring to the table, even at a level of maturity around life, how we process things, can be a protective factor. So what we want to do in workplaces, which is what we do with major banks and other organizations, is build the personal resiliency of individuals. So they can face any trials and tribulations that may come up in their daily work life. Of course, that doesn't excuse organizations to behave in a bullish manner. But it does prepare your staff in order to perform at a good level. I can share with you some of the things that we've been seeing. As an example, one of the major banks that we worked with, they have an insurance. And so this is in Australia after the huge floods that were all down the east coast. Their staff were obviously having very distressed callers ring up people who lost their houses, who potentially lost loved ones, really in distress. And so their staff needed to be supported, not just a, what do I say to these people who are in really desperate states, sometimes even suicidal? And how do I respond to people who might be aggressive or angry? Because we all have different reactions when we're faced with challenge. But also, how do I look after myself as an employee hearing these things? And this is what they've been focusing on. How do we build up those resilience strategies? What tools can I use to keep myself well? And they're seeing fantastic results, not only from the perspective of their staff are the loyalty to the organization has been enhanced because they're so appreciative that their workplace cares enough to recognize how challenging their role is and give them some tools to work with. But also at a purely practical business level, they are preventing the absenteeism that they would have had. They're preventing the psychological injury claims, the HR issues, the turnover. Because when people are not able to cope with the challenges and the demands of their role, they're not going to show up to work. They're going to create problems. They're going to eventually leave. So it's been a fantastic experience for them. What is it that we're getting wrong when it comes to mental health? What are we missing? What are we misunderstanding? I think one of the very, very important things that right now we're getting wrong is we are replacing good, solid psychological principles for ideological principles. I'll explain to you what I mean. Psychology tells us that the brain functions in a certain way. Ideology is very different. I want the world to be this way. And then if it's not that way, I will say it's not mentally healthy. But if it matches my fantasy or my ideal, then I would call that good mental health. But one of the basic psychology is you have to deal with the reality of a situation, not the fantasy that I would like it to be like, what are the facts of this matter? Okay, now we can move forward from there. Yeah, and what's derived from the ideological approach to mental health is this idea, which is a very wrong idea, that anything that makes me feel uncomfortable and unwell right now, that is bad for my mental health. Whereas we know from psychology that in order to help people, they have to sit in the hot seat. It's called a hot seat for a reason. They have to sit in the hot seat with expert help so they can get over that. And later they can feel better about themselves. But in the moment, it's not so comfortable. It's a crucible. It's very, yeah. When we talk about a comfort zone, you can stay in a little comfort zone. I think this is what I would say the biggest. But then you're having maturity. Bubble wrapping people. And we don't allow them to grow. Let's put a bunch of bubble wrap around them and put them in a padded room. And as long as everything stays the same, then it'll be fine, but that's not life. You need to learn to be out there in the world where shit's gonna happen. Exactly right. And a grown person should be a grown person, should behave, should have a certain level of maturity. And it shouldn't be a little kid in a big body. And at the moment, we're bubble wrapping so much some individuals that they're throwing tantrums when they're 40 or 50. Because they're children in a bigger body because they've never had any discomfort in their lives that hasn't been validated or justified, sometimes even by so-called experts. And it's creating a certain situation for them and for society that is not sustainable. At the same time, we don't wanna go back to, a really, really hard line, harsh approach, suck it up, get on with it and allow toxic situations and behavior. I mean, I don't like the word toxic. Absolutely. But we don't wanna go back to extreme on the other end of the scale. And I think this is what this is in reaction to. Yeah, and I'm talking about- It's like we don't wanna do that so now we go too far the other way. And I'm talking about individuals, the majority of individuals. I'm not talking to that small percentage of people that are really having a crisis. And when people are having a crisis, I have had many crises in my life. They don't need tough love at that moment. At those, yeah. At that moment you don't. But that's not my whole life. I need tough love later. Because we do not, finally, that from the research, we know that people that are with individuals, parents or even husbands or wife, that are tough on them, even though they have a mental health issue, they recover better than individuals that have overly understanding- Don't worry, I'll do it for you. Yes, I'll do it for you. And the same thing in a workplace, don't worry, you don't know how to do that, I'll fix it for you. You need multiple days off. We know once people are away for a mental health issue for a couple of days, their chances of coming back are greatly reduced. The longer they're away, the chances of coming back are less. So we need to have certain standards for people. And help them to meet those standards rather than dropping the standards. Than lowering the standards. We should not lower the standards. So those are sound psychological principles that we just talked about. Now, ideological principles that have seeped through mental health is, you can have as many mental health days as you want. In fact, you should have them. No, that's hogwash. It doesn't help the person either. Or the workplace, or the productivity. But I mean, at the end of the day, we're talking here about the mental health of individuals and the collective mental health. And we need to remember ideology and psychology don't always and very often don't match. We need to come back to the evidence. But evidence-based, what's the science showing? Not wishful thinking around this. Can we create a safe space for individuals where we can feel sometimes, we're gonna feel very, very uncomfortable. And that's why it's called a hot seat. It's not called a cushiony seat. It's called a hot seat for a reason. So what about at the individual level? What can we do, viewers watching this? What can we do for ourselves, our lives? And given that this is the state of the world at the moment, I mean, as individuals, we may not be able to necessarily change the whole world and the environment we're living in, the social, political, economic, like all of that, maybe beyond the scope, but for us in our world- I think in a very practical sense, one of the number one things we should do, if we want rapid change, is introduce humor and laugh about ourselves a little bit more. We become too serious about things and we need to learn to see the absurd in life and have a laugh about it. And not take ourselves too serious. That's the number one thing. Validate people's feelings. Sorry, just on comedy, I think has been so popular. Especially the black comedy, the dark comedy, because it's a counterbalance to the world at the moment. And it's pointing out the ridiculousness of- Ridiculousness? The ridiculousness, yeah. Of some of this stuff. So I think there's a need for it. There's a desire for it. People want it. I mean, maybe you can have a joke there. Appropriate, you don't have to make it dirty if you don't want to. Although some of them can be funny, it's up to you. But in the workplace, maybe you want to keep it clean, but keep it funny. Have a joke there, have a humor there. And take yourself too seriously. Yes, don't take yourself too seriously. You know, I mean, take your job seriously, take your work seriously, but not yourself. After the end of the day, who am I? I'm an imperfect human being. I'm going to be up and down. I'm like a yo-yo. I can be funny sometimes. I can be grumpy sometimes. I don't need to get stuck. And you're only going to be on the planet for a short while and then you move on anyway. And nobody will remember anything in data. So who cares, you know? However, the impact that you have on other individuals, if you make them happy, if you add a smile to their day, what about having a smile day? Right? That sounds so cheesy. Well, we have happy hours, right? Maybe we have a happy hour in the morning, which is a smile between nine and 10. And I have it with my coffee. Oh, you have to have coffee, yes. Whatever works for you. But you know, it's about coming up with ideas that can improve the collective mental health. Now we say, oh, that is, you don't really understand mental health if you think that's going to cure. We're not talking about extreme cases. We're not talking about people that have been medicated up to their eyeballs, that don't feel like laughing. They only feel like sleeping. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the general population. That we are under stress. We're under stress. I was speaking with a manager just the other day and she said there's a lot of the workforce really likes the idea of being kind to each other. But we need to educate them that it's not just people should be kind to me, it's that I should be kind to others as well. That goes both ways. You know, it's not all about what everyone pandering to me. It's about me contributing to others, too. To create that environment. That's a very good advice, you know. Are we, do we take time to sit down by ourselves and answer this question? When in the last week have I acted like an asshole to somebody else? That's a very sobering question. Because then we find out that we're not always this perfect human being so kind and so compassionate. Somebody, if we can be a bit of a jerk. And when we catch ourselves being a jerk, that's the beginning of wisdom because now we know our pattern and we can stop it next time. We can be a little bit less of a jerk. And imagine if we all did that, we can be next week a little bit less of a jerk to someone else. Wouldn't that be a better place to live in? You can also understand when someone is a jerk to you, maybe they're just having a bad day. Maybe I can give them the benefit of the doubt that I hope people would give me too. Exactly. And they're not evil because they're having a bad day. Yeah, well they said the wrong thing or they made a mistake or, yeah. The other thing people should do, which we don't do often enough, go and get some therapy. Yeah. Like if you are not happy with your life, go and get some therapy. If you or I are not being successful at relationships again and again and again, we can blame the other person or we can go and get some coaching or therapy. Yeah. It's a noble idea. Is it expensive? Yes. But so is divorce. So is divorce. And you know what? It's more expensive. If you do get a full blown mental illness and I put my hand up when I had my bipolar, I've wasted so many years and I lost a lot of money in those years. So don't wait for it to be full blown. Spend some money. Find someone good who works on what works, not on the ideology. And that can be tricky. Find somebody that can... And you may have to pay for it. But again, it's a good investment in yourself. And I would say get somebody that can make you a little bit uncomfortable in every session. Yeah. Yeah, you need, well that's the point. If they're too nice to you in every session, you're wasting your money. Grab my husband. Yeah, that's where you have a grandma. You can go and talk to grandma for that. But if you want a therapist or a coach, tell them to get behind you and push you a little bit. Yeah. A little bit. They don't go crazy, you know? A little bit. Depends on how you're feeling on the day. All right. I think there's some very interesting thoughts in there. I'd be keen to know what people think about that, what questions you have. Send in your comments. We read them. And yeah, we'd love to hear from you. Look, I know that we have spoken very frankly. I know that some things we said might not be very easy to listen to, but if they're not very easy to listen to, could it be that you need to hear them? I know that in my life, the times that I've heard things that were very uncomfortable in hindsight, some of them were the best moments for my growth. Yeah. So let's keep it light. You know, don't take yourself too seriously. Consider things, get the discussion open. Consider it. Reflect. We would love to hear your comments. And I do read the comments. We do read the comments in YouTube when you put them. And I promise we'll respond to them. We want to have a conversation with you. We will also want to know what else do you want us to expound on? What else do you want us to consider in more detail? And if you haven't had one of our courses in your organization, I'd say bring us in. Bring us in. We're not like everybody else. So everyone comes with their different worldviews, their different backgrounds, their different perspectives, their different areas of specialty in particular as well. Because we know that every workplace is different, right? They all have different needs, different strengths, different cultures. So we have a very diverse team to match that as well. Exactly, right. Some need more of a tough love approach and some need more of a gentle approach. And that's okay, we move with that. And we have an international team too. So we've got trainers from the UK, the US, Australia, Asia. Asia, so we're prepared, all right? So yes, be kind to yourself, but don't be too kind to yourself. Be kind to others, but don't be too kind to others. Get a balance. We'll do the same. Bye for now. Thank you, bye.