Breaking the mental health stigma: A 'spicy' conversation

Trigger warning: Talks about suicide and extreme mental health. 

According to the CDC, 37% of Americans rated their mental health as fair or poor, and 1 in 3 people feel their workplace mental health support is inadequate. These are the stats Taylor Miles, national marketing director for M&S EAP Services (and hot sauce enthusiast), shared in a recent session at the BenefitsPRO Broker Expo in Denver.

So, why is the mental health conversation so important? Miles says it’s because “everybody knows somebody.” To further his point, he recounted his mental health journey with the audience, starting with his father. Taylor walked through his father’s tough, abusive childhood, and while Taylor’s father was not abusive, he came from a generation that claimed, “if you don’t talk about it, it will go away.” Unfortunately, this sentiment does not ring true and Taylor would learn that.

When he was 13, Taylor’s father passed away from a brain tumor and within six months, Miles developed depression, anxiety, and insomnia. He struggled for years with his mental health and attempted to take his own life twice.

After experiencing a lifetime of mental health trauma, Miles decided he wanted to help people, and the first thing he did was become an EMT. While experiencing a really hard and traumatic case, his ambulance driver noticed he was struggling. The most the driver could do was hand Taylor a card with the suicide hotline number on it. “That was it. That was the only help I was offered. I knew there was something so wrong with that,” Miles recalled. Curious and seeking help, Miles called the number to only have it ring so long that it hung up on him.

After realizing how poorly mental health was handled in the world, Miles made it his life mission to help this conversation be more than just offering a card with some number on it. “Since then, it has been my passion and my drive to advance this conversation, to keep pushing this forward because yes, I am every single one of these statistics, but I’m not the only one,” said Miles.

Related: Helping employers factor mental health into benefits programs  

Now, what does this mean for employers? Anxiety and depression alone cost the global economy an astronomical $1 Trillion in lost productivity every year. Absenteeism, presenteeism, burnout and turnover are the biggest issues affecting the workforce.

When asked what the one thing employers and managers can do to support their team’s mental health, Miles replied, “Talk about it and lead by example”.