Nearly fifty percent of adults experience mental health issues at some point in their lives; however, only twenty percent of them receive effective professional help. At present, mental health problems are thought to be provoked by hereditary and environmental factors. While researchers have explored the problem of addressing mental health problems that occurred from genetics, this paper will focus on examining environmental factors that may play an adverse role in society’s mental health. Even though many societal issues may cause a deterioration of mental health, the topic chosen for this assessment is employment.
Mental health issues affect many employees due to stress and pressure to exhibit high-performance indicators. Also, mental health problems can occur due to burnout and the unmanageable workload that workers have to withstand to stay productive. Similarly, issues in relationships with other employees (e.g. verbal abuse from coworkers, disagreements with the employer, etc.) can hurt individuals’ mental health. To address this problem, it is recommended to come with one solution that can be incorporated into the work-life of an organization and one that will be suitable for addressing the overall mental health of the society and making people less susceptible to problems in the workplace.
The first solution for addressing the mental health of people within the workplace is associated with appropriate education and action plan development. Educating employers through strategic communication will help create a climate of change (Homan, 2016), as a result of which employees with mental health issues will receive proper treatment. The development of an action plan is the second step in addressing the issue of mental health. For the plan to be effective, employers have to establish an open dialogue with their workers (NHS, 2016) to get an idea of what changes should be made for addressing their mental health needs, as recommended by health care experts.
As to addressing mental health and employment outside the workplace, social policy experts recommend to introduce policies and strategies that will:
- Increase employees’ mental health awareness;
- Support workers at risk;
- Account for the treatment of employees with mental health issues;
- Change the organization of work in a way that will be sensitive to the issues of mental health.
When addressing mental health and employment, two ethical issues may arise problems with privacy when dealing with mental health in the workplace and difficulties with creating a policy that will align with local, state, and federal laws (NOHS, 2012).
As to the ethical issue of privacy, human service professionals must protect clients’ right to privacy. In the context of the workplace environment, this issue can be addressed through conducting anonymous surveys on employees’ mental health needs; moreover, it may be effective to disclose the identity of those workers who gave their consent, which refers to the Standard 2 for human service professionals. As to addressing the issue of alignment with local, state, and federal laws (Standard 12), human service professionals should collaborate with local and higher-standing authorities when developing an action plan for addressing the mental health needs of the communities. The alignment with rules and regulations will only be possible when the relevant stakeholders are engaged in the process of communication and knowledge sharing for introducing a policy that will address the mental health needs of the society.
References
Homan, M. S. (2016). Promoting community change: Making it happen in the real world (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage.
NHS. (2016). Supporting Staff who experience mental health problems. Web.
NOHS. (2012). Ethical standards for human service professionals. Web.