Insights, articles and updates on workplace mental health
This month a letter in The BMJ, the British Medical Journal, called for work-related suicide to be formally recognised and recorded in the UK. It was led by Professor Sarah Waters at the University of Leeds, and I was one of more than 30 signatories from across academia, industry and the charity sector. I signed […]
The phrase is everywhere now. It sits in board papers, recruitment ads, and wellbeing strategies. “We’re building a mentally healthy workplace.” It has become one of those terms that everyone uses and few people stop to define. So let me ask the awkward question. What does it actually mean? How would you know one if […]
If you lead an organisation in 2026, you have almost certainly heard the term ISO 45003. It turns up in board papers, tender documents and wellbeing strategies, often without anyone pausing to explain what it is. So let me do that plainly. ISO 45003, the global standard for psychological health and safety at work, sets […]
The appeal of the checklist Checklists are satisfying. They are concrete. They are auditable. They convert complex and ambiguous territory into a set of discrete, completable actions. Policy in place? Tick. EAP in place? Tick. Mental health first aiders trained? Tick. Manager awareness session delivered? Tick. This is not nothing. Having a policy matters. Having […]
The summer effect is real Most people feel better in summer. Energy tends to be higher, mood tends to be lighter, and the experience of work, while unchanged in most of its fundamentals, tends to feel more manageable. The reverse pattern in winter is equally well-documented. Lower energy, increased difficulty concentrating, a heavier quality to […]
The bite-sized world We communicate in fragments. Push notifications, social media posts, chat messages, quick-hit video content. The platforms that carry most of our daily communication have built brevity into their architecture. A standard SMS is 160 characters. A tweet grew from 140 to 280 but the appetite for short content did not change. TikTok, […]
The seasonal pattern is real GP consultations for depression and anxiety follow a seasonal curve. Referrals to psychological services tend to peak in autumn and winter. Mood disorders with a clear seasonal component, classified as Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, affect around one in fifteen people in the UK, with many more experiencing milder but […]
Mental health awareness weeks are not interventions. Neither is a yoga app subscription. So what actually works? The visibility problem Workplace mental health has never had a higher profile. Organisations run awareness campaigns. They offer employee assistance programmes. They train mental health first aiders. They share content on social media in October. And yet the […]
When the ground shifts, the organisations that hold people together are the ones that thought about it before the crisis hit. Crises do not arrive with warning A global pandemic. A sudden restructure. A major cyber incident. A leader falling. Sustained economic pressure that grinds on for months with no clear end. Crises come in […]
Here’s something that should keep every health minister, chief constable, and NHS trust board awake at night: the people we rely on most in our darkest moments are themselves in crisis. Report after report tells us the same story. Paramedics experiencing PTSD at rates comparable to combat veterans. Doctors leaving the profession in numbers we’ve […]
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