Ad agency marked Mental Health Awareness Week — a week later an employee’s breakdown was investigated as bad behaviour.

My friend, let’s call her Susan, has a bit of a story related to Mental Health Awareness Week. Her message to employers is to try not to cock it up by epically missing the point like her employer did. She’s still here to tell the tale but she’s a tough cookie. Others might not be.

Susan’s now ex-employer celebrated Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) last year. A week later, she pretty much had a break down in front of everyone’s eyes. Instead of medical intervention or even TLC, she was investigated for bad behaviour.

Susan was never told the results of the investigation (they were deemed ‘secret’) but she was told by the ‘boss’ that if she stayed it wouldn’t be pleasant. She’d resigned anyway (mid-breakdown) but she still had to go through the many weeks long investigation process to be told this news. The ‘boss’, who delivered this news to her, had said no more than 10 words to Susan during her four years of successful performance with the company. Yet there the ‘boss’ now sat, telling Susan how dreadful she was. No-one was interested in what had tipped Susan over the edge — valid reasons related to how a client was being ill-treated and internal lying. It was all how awful and bad a person Susan was.

Not only had Susan’s company trumpeted the importance of mental health care as part of MHAW, but Susan’s managers and colleagues knew she had a history of depression. Worse still, by asking for a Data Subject Access Request (which releases all files that include your name) their knowledge was confirmed in black and white. Susan discovered her managers, colleagues and HR were discussing her mental health at the time of the breakdown. One colleague wrote, “… she believes she has been wronged by her team, and we are leaping to interpreting it as a mental health issue.” HR wrote, “I would hate for (her) to think we are automatically assuming she is affected by her previous issues.” Her direct line manager wrote, “She was literally screaming at me on the phone. So I am concerned.” But they didn’t actually act on that knowledge. Nor did Susan know about these back-conversations until she received and read her data file months later.

As Susan’s friend, it’s never failed to amaze me that one week her company was handing out fliers and pinning up posters about Mental Health Awareness Week and 7 days later, zero fucks given. It almost beggars belief that a company did MHAW, knew that someone had mental health issues and still found fit to put them through an investigation process that led to little more than threats and outright character assassination.

Just to be crystal clear, Susan is all for MHAW knowing that everyone needs to be more aware of mental health issues. She’s also the first to say the royal Heads Together initiative inspired her to be more open about her own condition. As a result of being more open, some of the colleagues that were now writing about her, even knew she’d spent time in a psychiatric hospital following suicidal compulsions years before. She’d become less shy about taking her meds in front of people. She’d also stopped the same company from firing someone for alleged poor performance because it was obvious to Susan the person was suffering from depression. That person was given medical attention by the company and then made redundant.

So for Susan, doing something around MHAW was at least a step towards awareness. Having said that, it didn’t bring about any meaningful understanding, awareness … or change within the organisation.

The week included:

Various members of the management team confessing to “feeling down a few years ago” or “when I was sad one time I talked to my granny”. She paraphrases but you get the idea. She wondered at the time where were the, “I took a Stanley knife out of my toolbox and held it to my wrist” or, “I downed a shit load of pills only to throw up pieces of my stomach lining” stories?

Staff were encouraged to buddy up with people and tell them their issues. But as she says, anyone with serious mental health problems knows they are often the last person to know they’re spinning out so it’s unlikely they will take that initiative. AND often, you slowly isolate yourself more and more. It takes someone to spot it and to help you rather than a breezy, “Oh I feel suicidal today, I think I’ll go and have a chat with Jenny in accounts.”

A company needs to be alert to the symptoms, not the other way round. To be fair to a previous ad agency Susan worked for, they did spot that she was losing it and it’s them that got her straight into a hospital. Both she and I have always admired them and specifically HR for that life-saving intervention.

Back to the MHAW week in question, inevitably it included lots of material, billed as ‘company name likes: …”

- lists of mental health apps (eg Calm, Headspace)

- lists of online sites (eg soundcloud.com, mindful.org)

- lists of books (eg ‘Your brain at Work’ by D. Rock).

There was something about an employee assistance programme called ‘Unum Lifeworks’ to “help you manage personal issues at work or at home.”

The ad agency charity NABS was referred to (they are bloody good by the way). In fact, if you spot anyone being a bit shaky at work, Susan says direct them straight to NABS.

The company also announced a, ‘Mindfulness grant: A ‘company name’ brain is a rare thing. Its (sic) worth protecting’. This offered £25 a year towards an app, course, book, or other mindfulness/meditation resource of your choice to help you feel the best version of yourself.

If Susan remembers correctly screensavers were changed to something about Mental Health Awareness Week. Ad agencies usually do something involving screensavers.

So yes, hats off to any company that climbs on board MHAW. But a week later, when one of your staff goes off the rails — after quite a long build up to it, it turns out and multiple signals to line managers — try not to investigate them for bad behaviour. Susan survived. She’s still here. But the last thing you should do with people with depression is tell them how awful they are, send them home (where they live alone) and put them through an investigation process. Next time it will end in a suicide.