Taboo or tabloid fodder. For much of history, the subject of mental health has been avoided, shied away from, brushed under carpets, or treated as altogether 'other'. In Victorian times the afflicted were little more than the damned, but have our attitudes over the years changed to reflect 21st century progress, or have outdated paradigms endured? In many ways our society has made leaps and bounds in the right direction, and yet mental health is still the poor cousin of tangible, touchable, physical illness. And the imbalance is not only threatening our wellbeing, but the very fabric of our economy. Because despite our progress, working environments are not always the most inclusive environments – and where people don’t feel accepted, supported, or ‘part of the fabric’, productivity is usually the first thing to take a hit. Which is not something any organisation can take in its stride in today’s turbulent times.
To find out more about attitudes towards mental health in the modern UK workplace, and the effects of both the positive and negative treatment of mental illness on the sufferers themselves, Badenoch + Clark commissioned its own research: the statistics and insights that follow are based on the responses of 1,000 UK employees with one or more mental health conditions; the sample includes the medically diagnosed and the self diagnosed, with results broken down by sector (private/public), gender, and education level.
But what do they tell us? We are pleased to announce the findings.
