Mental Health Awareness Week: We Need Action As Well As Awareness And We Need It Now.
It’s great to see prominent members of our society coming forward and talking about their own experiences of mental illness and highlighting ways to access help. However, the inevitability around lack of NHS funding means the reality is that we need to do whatever we can to ensure there is less need for these services in the first place and that means investing time, effort and support into the area of prevention that receives far too little focus and emphasis.
The “Mental Health Crisis”
We need to take a step back and move beyond the mindset of “early intervention” and invest some thought and action into more proactive approaches. Prevention is better than cure. Rather than waiting for the symptoms of mental illness to present themselves, we need to invest in our children from a very early age to develop fundamental life skills that will enable them to adapt through pressure and uncertainty. Arm adults, parents, professionals, everybody with the mindset and resources to navigate intense levels of change to prevent poor mental health in the first place.
Managers lack people skills according to a new CIPD survey
Today’s working world is now full of technically good but people poor managers. If leadership is only just realising the impact of poor people management, perhaps there needs to be a shift in promoting “perceived talent” purely on technical skills and start to shift the focus on developing good “people” managers as well?