Does your workplace care about your mental health?

A few years ago, Rishika Anchalia was a typically over-worked employee, putting in 11-hour days at an ad agency with a particularly toxic environment. While this may have had a negative effect in the mindset of most employees at the company, for Anchalia, who has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, depression and anxiety, it was a particularly difficult time. Not only was the negative environment and an unsympathetic boss difficult to deal with, but the office also had issues when she started to seek help for her mental health and make regular trips to the therapist. “I once had to take a meeting on my way to the therapist in the morning, and on the way back,” recalls the 25-year-old, who has now decided to make a foray into the social sector.

Anchalia’s complaints with the company and ex-boss is only one of many when it comes to mental health issues not being taken seriously at the workplace. From talks, lectures and slide-shows to spoken-word poetry and movies, mental health has become a hot topic on many a forum. Still, the question remains, how much of the talk gets translated into action?

When it comes to workplaces, it is up to people in managerial positions to note whether mental health disorders are looked at in a sympathetic light. “My company is great. In the sense, they have a free counselling service that anyone can consult for therapy,” says Lavanya N, a journalist and writer, who has been working at an online portal since April. “But most management personnel are completely ignorant when it comes to dealing with employees.” She recalls an instance when one of her seniors made a triggering statement quite off-handedly and it was treated as a trivial matter by her boss when she brought the matter to notice.

Still, the situation at her current office, she admits, is much better than her previous places of employment, which included big media houses. One particular incident at a popular radio station has stuck with her: “My husband has been dealing with mental health issues for years. Then he had a breakdown, for which I had to take an emergency leave to be with him. When I returned the next day, I told my boss the truth. She responded very sarcastically, ‘And he’s okay now, ah?’”

GOOD BOSSES

While lack of understanding is often a problem with people in power, there are those who are empathetic to employees going through tough times, mental health-wise. Head of Godrej Culture Lab, Parmesh Sahani, for instance, freely speaks about his own fight with depression and believes that health should be looked at as a whole – neither mental nor physical aspects should be neglected.

“Because of my history of taking care of my own mental health and my openness to talk about it with others, at our Lab, if anyone I know is going through a difficult phase, I will be supportive of that person,” he says, adding, “Just as I will encourage an employee who has a physical ailment to go to the doctor and get better, I will do the same for a mental health issue.”

Thanks to the resources available to the Lab, which has done several events around mental health, Sahani is also able to mete out references and numbers to people who ask for help.

Anchalia, who is gender queer and identifies with the 'they/them' pronoun, also recall their boss at Nexta, Mumbai, who was helpful and understanding during their stint there. “Initially, when I had gone to work there, I had fever, and after I recovered from that, I was in a very dysfunctional head space. I didn't really leave my house for a few weeks. I wasn't doing anything or talking to people – I had a really bad phase, but with therapy I eventually got out of it. When I returned, my boss and I figured out a way forward and how work would go if this were to happen again. The most important part is that he didn't give me any grief for struggling with my issues," they reminice, adding that their gender identity was also something that their boss respected, even if he did not fully understand.

A TOP-DOWN APPROACH

Eventually, a massive change in work culture is needed, whether that is through a written-down contract à la Vishakha Guidelines or the creation of workspaces that are more open and inclusive. Given Godrej’s seven-year journey towards becoming an LGBTQ+ friendly space as an instance, Sahani says that the change has to be top-down. “If mental health becomes something that people talk about not on the margins, but from the top like CEOs and Managing Directors of companies, then we can create more and more bosses with empathy.”