Hi šš¼ Iām Rosie, Un-Executive Coachā¢ at the intersection of race, gender, and trauma. Iām dedicated to helping Asian and racialized women heal from the past and find hope for the future. My culturally relevant leadership coaching can help you succeed on your own terms and recover from toxic shame, covert racism, and other non-obvious traumas. Do you crave judgment-free support that's less executive, more equitable, and always empathetic? Subscribe and receive free trauma-informed tips to Change Your Lens, See Your Worth, and Be Your Self!
āLetās Talkā about mental health ā and how work is making us mentally ill
Dear Reader,
Imagine you got sick and went to your doctor, who said they could heal you.
How would you feel if you found out that same doctor was poisoning you?
Itās an extreme analogy, and in my opinion, entirely apropos to the way companies simultaneously market their mental health benefits while causing their employeesā mental illnesses.
Yesterday was Bell Letās Talk day in Canada, a day where mega-corp Bell Canada āhighlights organizations around the country that are creating positive change every day of the year.ā Their campaign website says "We kicked off the new year by committing an additional $10 million [for mental health]" and that "5,556,332 Canadians have been supported with access to mental health services through programs funded by Bell Letās Talk."
Without qualification, this is great progress. I've had depression and anxiety for years, and I know first hand how expensive treatments are. We absolutely need to make mental health services more accessible to more people, so this is critical work that organizations are doing.
AND...
If we aren't also talking about the conditions that are exploding the number of mental illness cases, investing in treatment alone is like putting a band-aid on a broken leg.
Over the past three years as I've been studying and working on systemic JEDI issues, I've also been studying and training in mental fitness, trauma, and recovery. The evidence is convincing that the way we're all working is making us sick. "Employee stress", "burnout" and even "turnover" are euphemisms covering a broad range of mental and physiological illnesses that often go unreported, undiagnosed, and untreated, because they're normalized as "it's just work".
And of course, while these capitalist corporate norms affect all employees, it's worse for equity-seeking individuals, like women, non-binary people, and racialized folks.
So while it's great that some employers are genuinely committed to providing mental health benefits and support for their employees, this one-sided approach is at best treating the symptoms, not the cause. It's akin to the corporations who boast about the buying carbon-offset credits as if they're superheros in fighting climate change. In reality, they're still polluting as much as ever, and justifying it by throwing some neutralizing "offsets" into the air, as if it's a mathematical formula where +1 - 1 = 0.
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In my latest article, "It's not Just Mental Health if it's not Just", I begin exploring how capitalist companies are polluting their workplaces with toxic practices and behaviours that are poisoning the people who work for them. This modern-day asbestos can not and should not be "offset" with mental health "programs". Unlike a cough or cold, mental illnesses don't just go away on their own, and aren't cured by drugs and therapy (even if they're free and abundant, which they aren't). Mental health services don't reverse the disease, they mostly end up co-existing together.
This does not mean we should stop talking or stop treating mental illness - quite the contrary. My hope is that these conversations and services will be inclusive of the socio-economic determinants of health (not just mental health), and take a holistic view of the causes and contributors to mind-body wellness.
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Reader, what conversations are you having with your colleagues and community about mental health and JEDI? What have you been learning, and what do you want to know more about? Please send me an email or DM me on LinkedIn to let me know, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Thanks for being part of the Changing Lenses community!
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Warmly,
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Rosie
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Changing Lenses: See Your Worth, Be Your Self, Live Your Life!
Hi šš¼ Iām Rosie, Un-Executive Coachā¢ at the intersection of race, gender, and trauma. Iām dedicated to helping Asian and racialized women heal from the past and find hope for the future. My culturally relevant leadership coaching can help you succeed on your own terms and recover from toxic shame, covert racism, and other non-obvious traumas. Do you crave judgment-free support that's less executive, more equitable, and always empathetic? Subscribe and receive free trauma-informed tips to Change Your Lens, See Your Worth, and Be Your Self!
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