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Anxious male employees still not seeking help

A new workplace wellbeing report from Champion Health reveals over half of male employees were experiencing anxiety.

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A study of 4,170 employees has revealed that the amount of professionals experiencing moderate to high levels of stress has increased, affecting 76% of our workforce, a year-on-year increase of 13%. Worryingly, workers experiencing suicidal thoughts has also increased from 8% to 9%.

A new survey by Champion Health showed 53% of men were experiencing anxiety and 50% depression. Yet only 25% of men, compared to 75% of women, were seeking mental health support. More men experiencing throughs of suicide or self harm (9% men vs 8% women) yet only 7% of men were seeking help compared to 12% of women.

“If you tell men that ‘men don’t want to talk about mental health’ then you somehow take away permission from those that do want to talk,” explains Dr Stephanie Fitzgerald, a clinical psychologist and founder of Soyo Ltd. “Men do want to talk about their mental health, of course they do, it’s a significant part of being human. But when we continually talk about the hard-to-reach population and say that it’s so difficult to get men to talk, we’re making it sound as though men shouldn’t talk and so they don’t. We need to normalise the male mental health conversation every day, to give male employees that permission to talk that for so long has been denied to them.”

Financial worries are reported as the leading cause for stress outside of work, cited by 37%, a 23% increase on last year’s report whilst perceived workload features as the highest cause of stress in work (73%).

Poor mental health negatively affects the performance of 1 in 5 employees.

Those who report ‘feeling part of a team’ experience greater positive mental wellbeing and feel more productive. In addition, team culture and feeling supported at work positively correlates with mental wellbeing and productivity.

Harry Bliss, CEO and co-founder of Champion Health, said, “Leaders need to step up and support their workforce, it is not only the moral thing to do but this research shows poor mental health, stress, and fatigue is increasingly affecting productivity, so it is also within the best interests of businesses.”

View the report at https://championhealth.co.uk/insights/workplace-health-report/.

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