Mental health & Wellbeing
Mental health has been defined by the World Health Organisation as “a state of well-being in which every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community”. It is more than just the absence of a mental health disorder, and it should be treated as equally important as physical wellbeing.
Companies can often find creating their mental health policy challenging. At The Doctors Clinic Group, we help make this process simple by providing an end-to-end support service. Not only can we help you create a tailored and suitable strategy for your business, but we also provide the wellbeing services to support it including mental health workshops, training, rapid referrals and more.
What is poor mental health?
Poor mental health at work is a widespread problem in the UK and globally. A study by Mind showed that in 2018, 48% of employees has experienced poor mental health in their current place of work. More worryingly, only half of those suffering spoke to their employers about the issue, which suggests many employees affected are suffering in silence. Mental health issues can happen to anyone. They can be triggered by a traumatic event, ongoing stress, childhood trauma, genetics, financial hardship or long-term physical illness. It’s suggested that one in six people will experience some symptoms of mental health problems in the UK every week.
Mental health problems include stress, anxiety, depression, OCD, schizophrenia, bipolar, eating disorders and more.
How can I tell if someone at work is struggling?
Mental health problems can have an array of different symptoms, including many physical ones. At work the key signs are:
- Feeling tired all the time
- Low motivation and poor concentration
- Being short tempered
- Making more mistakes than usual
- Isolating themselves
- Erratic behaviour
- Taking on more work than is manageable
It’s important to recognise early warning signs and to be able to provide adequate support to employees before a serious mental health issue develops. We can provide your team same day GP appointments in a confidential setting at all our clinics and via video. We are also able to provide on-site GP services on a regular or ad hoc basis.
How does it affect my workforce and business?
Poor mental health affects your business as much as poor physical health. Employee absence costs the UK economy up to £18 billion in productivity loss each year. This doesn’t account for the cost of presenteeism from the reduced capacity of employees struggling with stress and other mental health problems.
How we can help
A healthier workforce is a happier workforce, and this includes being mentally healthy too. By investing in your employee wellbeing strategy and providing your managers with adequate training to talk about mental health issues, you can reduce sickness absence and the impact on your business.
At The Doctors Clinic Group we provide a consultative approach to your employee wellbeing strategy. As well as GP services, we can provide thorough mental health support with our private GPs and consultant specialists.
We offer:
- Same day GP appointments – all GPs have mental health training
- Rapid referrals to our consultant psychiatrist and other specialists covered by all major PMI insurers
- Mental health wellbeing questionnaire for a company-wide benchmarking exercise
- Manager’s toolkit
- Mental health seminars
- Mental health first aid training
As a result of offering a joined-up employee health benefit, we can provide you with monthly reporting on usage and anonymised key health complaints to further shape your wellbeing strategy.
Contact us
Contact our corporate team for more information on how we can help improve the wellbeing of your people. You can call us on 020 8712 3762 or you can also email us.