The Daily Perils of Executive Life by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

Author:Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030917609
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

M. F. R. Kets de VriesThe Daily Perils of Executive LifeThe Palgrave Kets de Vries Libraryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91760-9_13

13. How to Support People Struggling with Poor Mental Health?

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries1

(1)Paris, France

Not until we are lost, do we begin to understand ourselves.

―Henry David Thoreau

Life doesn’t make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.

—Erik Erikson

Recently, when I visited one of my clients, he told me the following story. A month previously, one of his colleagues showed up for work looking extremely distressed. Everyone felt he was acting strangely. As soon as he reached his office, he began to empty his desk. In the process, he gave several small, beautiful art objects that decorated his office to one of his assistants. While he was busily doing all these things, nobody had the courage to ask him why. The next day he didn’t show up for work. When an assistant called him on his cell and at home there was no response. People at the office knew very little about him, apart from the fact that he lived alone and had been divorced for some time. When there was no sign of him the day after, they started to worry. Realizing that something was very wrong, they contacted his daughter. When she let herself into her father’s house, she found his body. He had killed himself.

My client told me that, afterward, many people in the organization felt guilty for not having recognized, or even ignored, the warning signs that their colleague was in mental distress. His suicide had impacted not only his loved ones, but also many people in the organization. His fellow executives felt that they should have been much more alert to what had been going on. But instead of dealing with the discomfort of this person’s strange behavior, they opted to bury their heads in the sand.

This story is an extreme case, but many people find it difficult to talk about mental health, in either a private or an organizational setting. They don’t realize that failing to pay attention to employees’ mental health can be very costly. The total productivity costs of absenteeism due to mental distress are staggering. Nevertheless, the stigma associated with bringing the issue to the fore persists in many workplaces. Many employers are unaware, however, how widespread mental health problems really are. And even if they recognize it as a problem, they don’t know how to deal with it. Discussing people’s mental state is fraught with taboos, with predictable consequences: employees are not getting the help and support they need.

Resorting to denial—not wanting to see that there is a problem—is not the answer. For too long, we have swept the topic of mental illness under the carpet, hoping that it will just go away. But given the omnipresence of mental health issues, we need much more openness, transparency and understanding in dealing with them.

According

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