A recent World Health Organisation - led study estimates that depression and anxiety disorders cost the global economy US$1 trillion each year in lost productivity.

It is for this reason that the Springboard, Your Virtual University, a radio programme on Joy FM used this week’s edition to discuss psychological distress in an organisation, its effects on productivity and how the organisations can help the individuals overcome it.

Speaking on the programme, the Head of Human Resource of the CalBank, Mr Samuel Boafo, said ‘”within an organisational context, you understand that when it comes to employees health and wellbeing, it has always been on the physical illness side.

He said most organisations ,therefore, put in a lot of investments on physical illness to make sure that when their employees got sick; they had access to medical care and all the support needed.

He noted that the same attention was, however, not given to psychological distress, stating that “for want of not stigmatising people, the way that subject is discussed within the country creates the impression that when people have mental health challenges; they are seen to be mad.”

“The conversations have not really been on people having mental disorders. These are latent issues and unfortunately even people who are aware or may be aware that they may be constrained one way or another in terms of their capacity to do the work may not be willing to come forward.

“In terms of reported cases, we don’t have individuals owning up and walking up to you say ‘I think I need help in this area’. Most of them may be resorting to a physical or the normal clinical assessment to see what could be wrong,” he stated.

Training by expert

In the case of the CalBank, he said the company had brought in an expert to train its line managers on mental health issues and see how they can make an initial assessment to determine whether an individual would require help or not.

Through this, he said the company had been able to put in place measures that enable them to pick up early signals of people who might be suffering from mental health issues and provided help to those who need them.

Red flags

Commenting on what some of the red flags are that a person may be suffering from a mental health issues, Mr Boafo said, “the person’s involvement and normal productivity level starts going down and people begin to observe certain unusual traits about that individual and this creates room for people to begin to question what is going on.”

“Sometimes, people become so dysfunctional that they can’t even contribute to any meaningful discussion and that is when their targets start going down and in some cases, it leads to some kind of unprovoked quarrels or some tensions,” he noted.

First line response

Responding to what should be the first line of action if an organisation identifies some these warning signs, he said “by training, I do have some psychology background as well so the first thing I do is to invite the individual for a conversation.”

“In the conversation, it is not really to diagnose anything, but it helps me appreciate what is happening. Sometimes, it can be issues of the person having a challenge that has nothing to do with a mental health issue or psychological issue.

“There have been instances where people as a result of an experience that may happen in the work clearly come up with conditions that tell you that there could be something beyond, so you need to first have a conversation with the individual to understand what is happening,” he stated.