First aid for mental health
Workplace health and safety has come a long way since the days of a medicine cabinet with a bottle of antiseptic and a package of bandages — Red Cross is now offering mental health workshops for the workplace.
Red Cross trainer Anthony Cameron said mental health training is as equally important as traditional first aid training. “Mental illness is statistically very common and with people spending so much time at work it is likely a person may display warning signs at work.”
With this in mind, Red Cross has developed a suite of training workshops called Mental Health Matters designed to help employees and management cope with mental health issues and create mentally healthy workplaces.
“Research shows that more than six million working days are lost every year in Australia due to mental illness,” said Cameron. “Creating a mentally healthy workplace leads to less absenteeism, better creativity and productivity, as well as improved physical health.”
A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report1 explains that businesses that invest in positive mental health practices are more likely to see reduced illness in the workplace and teams that perform and thrive, returning an average of $2.30 for every $1 spent on mental health training.
Red Cross recommends that all workplaces include Mental Health Matters workshops as part of their workplace health and safety strategies.
Facts and stats
- One in five Australian adults will experience a mental illness in any given year.2
- PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) report, Creating a mentally healthy workplace, estimated that untreated mental health issues cost Australian workplaces $10.9 billion in lost productivity each year.3
- Research shows that developing a combined ‘systems’ approach that incorporates both individual and organisational strategies is the most effective way to intervene in relation to job stress and to improve employee health and health behaviours.4
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