Let's Start a Conversation About Mental Health With Barbara Brennan

Mental health is such an important consideration for a healthy working environment and even more for a balanced personal life. During the COVID-19 crisis, we feel this is an aspect that needs to be addressed again and again by all of us. It’s something that we need to be mindful of for ourselves and for the people around us.

On this episode of the podcast we are talking about mental health with Barbara Brennan, the programme coordinator with See Change Ireland, the national stigma reduction partnership. See Change focuses on changing people’s attitudes, perception and the whole conversation related to mental health. Their work is informed by people with lived experiences of mental health difficulties, who are best placed to give insight into mental health stigma.

One of their most well-known initiatives is the Green Ribbon Campaign. See Change usually run this campaign in May, when they distribute around 500.000 green ribbons that people wear on their lapel all through the month. The whole purpose of the green ribbon is to start a conversation, so when you see a person wearing it you know they are open to talking about mental health. It gives people an incentive to check-in with others and be able to ask “How are you feeling?”. Getting an honest answer from someone who feels safe enough to say “I am not doing that great” is already a win in the battle to reduce mental health stigma.

How does See Change Ireland promote mental health conversations in the workplace

See Change established a workplace focused programme back in 2012 and started rolling it out in 2013. The purpose of the See Change Workplace Pledge is to introduce a structured framework that organisations can implement to work towards an open culture of mental health in the workplace and ensure it is not just a box ticking exercise.

See Change look at the language used when talking about mental health, at the language of the stigma that surrounds the topic and the impact it has on the workplace. “So, for example, if I am working with you in an office and we are both in the same job, and I am experiencing a mental health difficulty and you aren't. What barriers are in my way or what things might I experience in exactly the same scenario as you? Purely because of a mental health difficulty” Barbara says. See Change are looking at educating people to have more open and informed conversations and to stop being afraid of the topic. It’s important for people in the workplace to be open to listening to their co-workers, without having to give any professional mental health advice.

Talking from experience is the key to helping others with mental illness

See Change is a human-centred organisation and Barbara is very passionate when she talks about the heart of their work; ”we have an ambassador program, which is really the core and the heart of our work and that looks at people with lived experience of mental health difficulties, sharing their stories of what it's like to go through that difficulty. What it's like to experience stigma and more importantly, the things that help, the things that make a difference and how we can change that conversation.”

Over the past decade, Barbara has discovered that the most powerful piece is listening to people’s stories because it gives an element of human connection that no other piece of advice or training can transmit. Barbara herself is an ambassador for mental health as she started getting sick from a very young age and had her first suicide attempt at 14 years old. Her journey with an enduring mental illness is an inspiring one. Her last suicide attempt in 2008 could have easily been the end but she managed to come back from that. “Twelve years later, I'm fully off medication. I bought my own house. I have run three different businesses. I now run our national stigma reduction partnership. So that really shows that people can and do recover.”

How can we work on our mental health now and in the coming weeks and months

These are unprecedented times, Barbara says. We are not having enough human interaction; we are living in isolation and it is normal to feel like we need a break. It’s the little things in our day to day lives that will help us keep ourselves afloat. “If I went back to talk to myself from 15 years ago and I told myself that sleep and water and food and hobbies and friends were going to fix my life, I would've laughed at myself. And not only that, I would have been offended because I would have been saying, so you're telling me I've suffered for the last 15 years to the depths that I have, and those few simple things are going to fix me? Yeah, right. But genuinely, those tiny things that we talk about are huge target anchors for our life. The problem is that we're focused on these big problems all the time. If the little things on the tiny wheels don't work, the big things jam.” She says it is very important to keep an open mentality to all the changes we are going through right now, to working from home, not having a designated desk space, working with our children at home. These challenges are something we are all facing at the same time.

How can employers support their teams at this time

Organisations are attempting to adapt to the changing environment and some businesses have no procedures in place for a situation like this. The most important thing for employers to do is to communicate, to communicate openly and frequently with their employees. “So really, the piece there is to be communicating again all the time, having a conversation and saying we are working on putting this in place. In the meantime, this is what we'd like you to do until that's in place. Or have you got suggestions? We'd like to work with you on this or we don't know what's happening [...] Silence is so much worse than being told: We have no news.”

The See Change Workplace Pledge is a process that could help as it applies to organisations and businesses that want to take a look at the way they are implementing and communicating about mental health in their teams. It is a 6-step process that starts with looking at the culture of the organisation, at ways to implement stigma reduction and then progresses to developing procedures. At this step, it is crucial to make sure the organisation has specific mental health policies and procedures in place. Another step of the pledge focuses on engagement “How do I engage with my clients, my suppliers? How do I engage with people external to my company? Do they think that my company is promoting good mental health?” Barbara notes.

The final step is becoming a See Change accredited workplace which gives the organisation the chance to connect and share experiences with all the other workplaces who have taken the pledge “We collaborate with a number of workplaces throughout the year on different projects. So it really is about how do we create a family that can come together on this topic and says, what's working? What would help? What would make it easier?”

Looking towards the near future Barbara plans to postpone the Green Ribbon Campaign until after the month of May. She thinks that the end of the pandemic will be a good time to focus on a discussion about mental health. Coming out of this difficult time and going into winter people will need all the support they can get to adjust to the changes, to have those conversations.

“I'm looking forward to developing an even bigger Green Ribbon because we've got long term plans. In the meantime, we are going to be online a lot more. [...] Let's support each other and see what is going to work.”

Listen to the entire podcast here. Watch the full video of our conversation here. Please enjoy my conversation with Barbara Louise Brennan.

Want to learn more about See Change Ireland? Go to www.seechange.ie or reach out on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

 Want to connect with Barbara Brennan? Email her at coordinator@seechange.ie