Category: suicide

Reflect on failures before jumping into change

Gabrielle Carlton, Director & Principal Consultant at Resylience, recently published an interesting article about her experience with a former Australian soldier who was struggling with work-related mental ill-health. The mental health of defence personnel is a hugely important and complex situation that questions the core function of defence and our expectations of defence personnel. However, some of her comments on psychosocial health in the article’s conclusion caught most of my attention.

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What to do about workplace mental health? Talk, Listen, Examine

Seminars on workplace mental health must always offer solutions and not only (always) the solution that the host wants to promote. Occupational health and safety (OHS) needs to be more altruistic (Yes, it may be hypocrisy from a subscription blog). Recently I spoke on the issue of psychosocial hazards at work and offered this slide on “What can be done?” [Note: This article discusses suicide]

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Now “we need a systemic reform to the mental health system”. We always did

[This article discusses suicide.]

The tide seems to be turning in approaches to the prevention of suicides in Australia. Recently the CEO of Suicide Prevention Australia, Nieves Murray, concluded a radio interview with some advice that relates directly to workplace suicides.

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OHS and the weekend newspapers – 1

This is the first of, hopefully, many articles about what some of the weekend newspapers and media say about issues related to occupy national health and safety (OHS). It will not be comprehensive but short takes on what I see in the newspapers.

[Note, the article below mentions suicide and workplace bullying]

Workload and Suicide

It has been a year since an employee of the Victorian Building Authority, Rob Karkut, died by suicide. According to The Age (May 13, 2023, [paywalled] his suicide occurred:

“…amid intense pressure from the authority’s managers to meet ambitious inspection targets. A litany of failings within the organisation have been exposed since his death.”

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Mental health at work –  “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”

Psychological health in the workplace seems to be a recent phenomenon because various Australian jurisdictions are strengthening prevention and management strategies through legislative amendments. This is supported by the World Health Organization’s definition of burnout as an occupational phenomenon. But psychological or psychosocial health and safety at work was a concern last century.  In fact, The Australian Psychological Society conducted the First National Conference on Occupational Stress in June 1994, and the book, edited by the late Dr Peter Cotton, based on the papers and presentations from the conference, remains remarkably topical and absent of the well-being language and spin that we have been exposed to since.

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Hubris, thy name is HR

The Human Resources (HR) sector often feeds off itself, reinforcing what it has always done, rather than seriously looking at opportunities to improve from outside its own experience and discipline. Workplace mental health is a particular example.

Recently the Human Resources Director (HRD) website promoted a new well-being survey from AON with the headline:

“Want to boost company performance? Invest more in wellbeing – Higher wellbeing scores can enhance performance by up to 55%: Aon report”

My initial response was WTF?! But after giving up some of my identity data to the website and reading the AON Report. My surprise diminished as I realised the report was just another example of comforting a profession on a workplace issue about which it is losing control.

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When empathy is also harmful

One of the favoured characteristics of a successful corporate leader is empathy for those under one’s duty of care. The logic is, if you care about your workers, you will look after them and prevent them from harm. But in some jobs, the empathy needed to do the job well also exposes workers to psychosocial harm. This issue of vicarious trauma is an element of our increased attention to workplace mental health and is receiving global attention.

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