Episode #12: Navigating the Mental Health Maze Across Generations in the Workplace
May 29, 2024
Transforming Culture Consultants
Discover how to navigate the often-ignored terrain of mental health in the workplace, particularly within the dynamic of a multi-generational workforce. Sharon Wilson and Cindy LaCom from Transforming Culture Consultants join forces to dissect the unique mental health challenges and stigmas that boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen Zers confront. Their expertise offers valuable insights into the shaping influences of generational experiences, the escalating anxiety and depression rates among the youth, and the ensuing impact on today's work culture.
Embark on a journey with us as we explore thought-provoking strategies to foster a supportive and inclusive environment where mental well-being is a priority and every individual's experience is acknowledged and addressed with empathy. This episode is not just a conversation but a call to action for creating a culture where mental health issues are understood and supported, ensuring a healthier, more productive workforce for the future. In episode 12, Sharon and Cindy help illuminate the path toward a transformed workplace, where the well-being of every generation is a shared commitment.
Discover how to navigate the often-ignored terrain of mental health in the workplace, particularly within the dynamic of a multi-generational workforce. Sharon Wilson and Cindy LaCom from Transforming Culture Consultants join forces to dissect the unique mental health challenges and stigmas that boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen Zers confront. Their expertise offers valuable insights into the shaping influences of generational experiences, the escalating anxiety and depression rates among the youth, and the ensuing impact on today's work culture.
Embark on a journey with us as we explore thought-provoking strategies to foster a supportive and inclusive environment where mental well-being is a priority and every individual's experience is acknowledged and addressed with empathy. This episode is not just a conversation but a call to action for creating a culture where mental health issues are understood and supported, ensuring a healthier, more productive workforce for the future. In episode 12, Sharon and Cindy help illuminate the path toward a transformed workplace, where the well-being of every generation is a shared commitment.
Well, welcome everyone to Transformation Talks. The intention of our podcast is to provide tips, strategies and inspiration to transform workplaces, communities and lives. I'm Sharon Wilson and I'm the co-founder and chief mindset and growth officer at Transforming Culture Consultants, and I have with me today our other co-founder, cindy Lecombe, our chief impact and inclusion officer. In the last few episodes, we've talked about the challenges and opportunities of a multi-generational workplace and about the harms done by stigma and stereotyping of invisible disabilities. Now, in both cases, we also considered action steps we can take to foster a more equitable workplace culture. Today, we want to extend these conversations within a multi-generational context, to consider the role of mental health in today's workplaces and to close with some suggestions about how we might be able to better understand and support people living with mental health issues.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. You and I have talked about this, Sharon. We agree that this topic is incredibly timely, so I'm very glad that we are in fact discussing it. If we want to start with the challenge of a multi-generational workforce, it's definitely worth noting that different aid cohorts tend to experience mental health in distinct ways, which can or should have an effect on how a business or a non-profit might address and then diminish those negative stereotypes and the stigma that might otherwise occur. And while generational research can be controversial, there's abundant evidence that stigmatization of mental health is much higher among boomers, who are born sometime between 1946 and 1964, and Gen Xers born between 1965 and 1950. So there's higher stigmatization of mental health among these two age cohorts than among millennials and Gen Zers. Boomers and Gen X tend to share a kind of suck it up and deal with it attitude, and many in these two age cohorts express skepticism or worse about their younger colleagues with mental health issues. But what's really interesting is that, starting with millennials those who are born after 1975-76, we begin to see higher levels of anxiety than in previous generations.
Speaker 2:
In one of our recent episodes on navigating a multi-generation workplace, we noted that each aid cohort tends to have life experiences, especially in their youth, that produce shared values and beliefs.
Speaker 2:
Now, if we apply that to millennials, we can see that there are a number of experiences that might have contributed to this increased anxiety for them. This generation was the first to deal with school shootings. Many were in their late teens or early 20s when 9-11 occurred. Many were in their late teens or early 20s when 9-11 occurred, and many felt the impacts of the economic recession of 2008 as youth. Maybe their families lost jobs, Maybe they lost a home, Maybe they saw their economic capacity in their families decrease, and this means that they moved into young adulthood with high levels of economic uncertainty and a greater sense of precariousness about our society than in previous generations. As for Gen Z, recent data tells us that almost 30% report experiencing depression, and a recent report compiled by Harmony Healthcare IT shows that 61% experience anxiety. This matters for a number of reasons, but in terms of workplace culture, it matters because by 2025, Gen Z will make up over one quarter of our nation's workforce.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's really worth talking about, cindy, and, as you said, if each age cohort has experiences that shapes its values and attitudes, it's important to spend time on what might impact Gen Z to contribute to this higher instance of mental health issues. But a few of the ones we see cited most often in the research include anxieties about climate change, gun violence, economic instabilities and equities, and the experience of COVID-19 and the quarantine, and, of course, social media, as we talked about in a previous podcast. Gen Z born after 1996, are digital natives. They've grown up with social media, are digital natives. They've grown up with social media, and while this has had some positive outcomes, it's also had a number of negative impacts.
Speaker 1:
One clinician, ariel Cannon, points out in an interview that Gen Z is the only generation that has, from the beginning, had internet, social media and a broader pool to get information from. While this can be a good thing, it can also contribute to anxiety. Does the phrase information overload sound familiar? Unfortunately, it probably does, and this is doubly true for Gen Z, while they tend to be the most vocal about mental health and the least inclined to stigmatize it. That's a good thing. One potential consequence of so much online information is that, as Candace notes, this can make mental health seem more prevalent than it really is. In other words, the more social media circulates and centers mental health, the more foundational it can become to those consuming the social media.
Speaker 2:
I think that is a really good point, that things tend to become more important to us as we read more about them, as they become more pervasive in our society. So thank you for mentioning that. We have talked actually about invisible disability and stigma. We did that in our last episode and that included mental health. Most of the time when we think of invisible disabilities, we don't see mental health, and so people experiencing issues have to navigate their own kind of coming out. They have to make ongoing decisions about disclosure options and choices on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:
We want to reiterate how difficult and how traumatizing that can be, and we want to be careful not to replicate the stigma that's so often placed on mental health. However, we also want to address tough questions and to be thoughtful, balanced and transparent in our exploration of this topic. And to be thoughtful, balanced and transparent in our exploration of this topic. Yes, people experiencing mental health issues face far too much stigma, stereotyping and discrimination and we need to actively take steps to stop that. More conversations about mental health and trauma can help, especially because depression or anxiety can often feel isolating and destigmatizing them can support people in seeking out more information, help and support. All really good things.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, cindy, but if using online forums for understanding mental health can have positive outcomes, there are also potential problems. One major problem is that misinformation spreads quickly and it can be taken as fact by those who are finding their information online, which is a majority of Gen Zers. Mental health professionals are increasingly seeing children and youth self-diagnosing mental health issues after watching influencers discuss them on TikTok and other social media platforms. And while self-diagnosis can be a start for those wanting answers, self-diagnosis also has the capacity to be harmful. One possible harm is that it often shuts the door to working with a professional who might help an individual experiencing mental health issues. Another problem discussed by Savannah Davis in her very insightful piece Social Media's Role in Normalizing Mental Health Issues Helpful or Harmful is that self-diagnosis can lead to comparison-based thoughts like if this person makes it look so good, why is it so hard for me? These kinds of comparisons can be incredibly damaging if someone following an influencer with depression who claims to have conquered it, cannot get out of bed or is dealing with suicidal ideations.
Speaker 2:
Yes, that's a really, really important point, and actually I think part of what we're talking about is the ways that social media can and does normalize mental health issues, take them out of the closet, so to speak. As you said, this can nurture opportunities to openly discuss the issues, and this can be a plus, but also a problem. There are risks that come with assuming that everyone has a mental health issue, and, though not all Gen Zers believe this, many do take for granted that their peers experience either anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder or all three. Why is this problematic? Let me illustrate through a couple examples. In one workshop I facilitated, a participant said Everyone has anxiety, but we need to consider how this might impact people with serious clinical anxiety disorders. Anxiety is a normal, healthy response to stress and most of us do experience that, but people with anxiety disorders experience anxiety out of proportion to the situation. That can actually impair their ability to function. There's a difference impair their ability to function. There's a difference, and collapsing it into an everyone-has-anxiety position is problematic.
Speaker 2:
Let me just extend this with one other example. It's become more and more common for Gen Zers to identify as being neurodivergent, but I think of one student who said during a class discussion, but that's not fair. I'm autistic and I really am neurodiverse. If everyone claims that identity, you've just appropriated my lived experiences and flattened out my challenges. That comment led to some difficult, important and necessary discussions around identity definition, stigma and appropriation. Ooh, that's a lot. So let's tie this back to the workplace and how we might address mental health in a multi-generational context. Sharon, do you want to say a bit about this? Sharon, do you want to say a bit about this.
Speaker 1:
Sure, we shared some of the reasons why different generations might have different attitudes about, and experiences of, mental health, and we tried to provide multiple perspectives on why Gen Z experiences higher incidence of mental health issues. It's complicated, isn't it? But we can't afford to simply throw up our hands and shrug our shoulders. For that reason, our workforce brings diverse and sometimes conflicting understandings of mental health and stigma into the workplace, and we want really need to create a culture where we recognize and respond to those differences in a gracious, respectful and effective manner. To that end, we want to offer a few suggestions before wrapping up to help you get there. What are some action steps your workplace might take to better and more equitably support workers with mental health issues? Well, one key step is to provide trainings to help employees recognize and then diminish both implicit and explicit ableist biases within a multi-generational workforce. The second is to promote mental health awareness. Third could be to develop action steps to de-stigmatize mental health disorders. This can look like trainings that integrate the information we've shared in this episode, but might also include strategies for effective communication and for stronger social support among employees. It's also important to provide resources to help employees address mental health issues. It's a first step, but it's just as important to also provide training on how to access those resources and make use of them. And because the workplace culture is often sustained by choices management makes and policies management supports, consider providing trainings for management and supervisors so that they're better equipped to recognize management and supervisors, so that they're better equipped to recognize, understand and effectively respond to and accommodate mental health issues. And, finally, address workplace stress. Almost 80% of Americans consider their jobs to be stressful, and this has a number of harmful consequences, from individual suffering to lost revenues. Balanced workloads and flexible schedules can help. So can a workplace culture that rejects bullying and celebrates victories. We want to build a stronger, more equitable workplace because it's the ethical and just thing to do, but we also want to point out that doing so helps with hiring retention, increased innovation and creativity and a more robust bottom line. So it's our intention to be a support and resource for you to help navigate these unprecedented challenges in our workplace cultures and create thriving cultures that have a ripple effect that impacts us all in a positive way.
Speaker 1:
We'd love for you to join a community of HR professionals, executive directors and managers that are wanting to create and grow more empowered workplaces and organizations. You can get free tips, resources and opportunities to attend free virtual gatherings. We can engage with industry leaders and innovators, exchange ideas, strategies and best practices. You can go to transformingcultureconsultantscom slash HR. We're also available to provide you with a free virtual consultation to explore any challenges or opportunities in your workplace culture, and you can apply for that at transformingcultureconsultantscom slash free application. You can connect with us on LinkedIn at Transforming Culture Consultants. Our vision is a world where employees feel happy, respected, valued and safe. Thank you for being a part of this vision.
