The next pandemic has already been predicted. It’s time to prepare ladies and gentlemen!
The mental health pandemic.
Its just as infectious – and the data is in, it is on the rise.
Attended a webinar by Gallup that really helped put things in perspective. In South-East Asia, among all survey respondents:
– 47% experienced daily #WORRY
– 36% experienced daily #STRESS
– 24% experienced daily #ANGER
– 30% experienced daily #SADNESS
These figures were all up between 4-6% from previous years.
Personally, I know that my own experience of these emotions has been higher in the last 1.5 years, as we coped with the pandemic.
We do need these emotions, ALL our emotions are good. But we definitely do not need an increase in the experience of them.
IMPACT: Less Well-being, Less Thriving which leads to long-term loss of productivity and creativity.
Here are my key takeaways from the webinar (Thank you Akash Mohan, Kanika Singh and Anna Zhang for your clear and practical sharing):
– the best place to confront his pandemic is at the workplace. That’s where we spend the most time.
– The responsibility is dual – as individuals, we need to take ownership of our own well-being; and organisations need to create the climate and conditions for the well-being of their people.
– For me, as an individual, there are 5 elements for well-being – Career (liking what I do), Social (having meaningful friendships), Financial (Managing money well), Physical (Having energy) and Community (liking where I live)
– For organisations, People Managers are absolutely key to creating the the conditions of well-being – by being gardeners rather than mechanics. As Akash said, People are largely fine – if the climate is right, they will grow.
Link to the report and recording in the first comment.
Over the last few years, our work at The Change Business has been with Individuals – helping people develop their Emotional Health, as well as to Understand and Communicate better with others.
So, for the last few months, our eyes have been on the Covid-19 numbers – and bringing them down.
It’s time to focus on our next task – still bringing the numbers down – for daily worry, stress, anger and sadness.
So that we can thrive.
