Heads or Tails: Mental Health, Mental Illness, and Two Ends of the Same Continuum
We are in a time where the lens of the discussion around mental illness is focused on fragmenting the stigma surrounding it.
As a nation, we have championed this discussion and progressed its significance immensely; #BellLetsTalk hashtags now span our country from coast-to-coast, a federally recognized psychological safety standard in the workplace has now been recognized, and in 2010, the Mental Health Commission of Canada was formed to tackle the ongoing issue of mental illness at a national level.
Yet despite such progress, we have a long way to go before we can truly say we understand the depth or the magnitude of the mental health crisis which sits before us.
No industry is immune to mental illness; nor is one individual.
Before we can truly break the stigma, we need to reframe our understanding of mental health and mental illness as being two sides of the same coin, or two ends of the same continuum. In the same way that we do not view race as black and white, instead seeing one another as different tones on the same colour wheel, in failing to view mental health and illness in this same way, then we will continue to see these variables in isolation of one another. In turn, regardless of our intentions, we will continue to stigmatize mental illness.
These continuums are inherent in all of us, and until we recognize that mental health and mental illness are birds of a feather, we will continue to fly in diverging directions.
Why Benefits Providers & Brokers Need to Make Mental Everything a Priority:
Benefits Canada recently asked which benefits and pension topics/priorities are top of mind going into 2020. Three of Canada's top benefits and pension providers were surveyed.
These were the top three priorities:
Employer obligations around medical marijuana
Using technology and data efficiently
How digital health will affect the benefits industry
Health benefit claims relating to a mental illness are too high for us as an industry to continue ignoring.
As an industry, mental health and mental illness need to be at the forefront of the discussion; not in the background, not in the shadows, and certainly not outside the scope of our top three priorities as an industry. At every level, I question and ultimately challenge the leaders of the group benefits industry as to why we are not doing more to advance our understanding of mental health and mental illness in the workplace, when we are so frequently exposed to this by virtue of our responsibility to analyze claims for our clients.
We have to look beyond how prescription drugs impact price, instead asking our clients to consider what the cost to their business would be if their key employees were mentally unfit to perform their job duties. We have to start understanding that physical and mental ailments often parallel one another, recognizing that mental illness is not a disease which typically sits in isolation. And most importantly, we need to take action; there are very tangible strategies that we can implement for our clients above and beyond an employee-assistance program. It’s time to think beyond this. If we continue to see indicators of mental illness as simply numbers on a report driving claims and utilization, we fail to recognize the fragility behind the claims, and the fragility of the human being.
To those asked to participate in this Benefits Canada article, I challenge you to be bold enough to put the mental health discussion in writing, and to ultimately prioritize this.
To the editors of Benefits Canada, I challenge you to take a more critical and analytical focus on mental health and use the breadth of your reach to spread awareness to an industry which fundamentally lacks mental health education.
Because in hindering this discussion, we fail our clients, and ultimately, the people behind the claims.
