Q5 were delighted to host an ‘Improving Mental Health in the Workplace’ breakfast yesterday morning. Guest speaker Lord Dennis Stevenson - co-author of the ‘Thriving at Work’ report - shared his personal experiences and insights into the positive, tangible changes that organisations can make to think differently and encourage mental wellness. We were joined by senior leaders from a range of industries for a very open and thought provoking discussion in the room - expertly chaired by Mark Rice-Oxley. We have shared a summary of the contributions in the attached PDF.

1. 1
Improving Mental Health At
Work
Q5 Breakfast – with keynote speakers Lord
Dennis Stevenson and Mark Rice-Oxley
3rd July 2018
The Office Group – Thomas House

2. 2
Executive Summary
Questions considered at the Q5 breakfast
• What impact does work have on our mental health?
• How can we provide a holistic range of support for wellness in the workplace?
• What are the different cultural challenges to improving mental health in the
workplace?
• How do we create a safe working environment that enables candid conversations
about mental health, with the appropriate language to support discussions?
• How can we change an organisational culture of perfectionism / expectation to be at
the “top of our game” all the time to acknowledging it’s OK to need help sometimes:
celebrating the struggles as well as the successes?
Key themes
Awareness
• Change the perception that mental health is an
illness
• The workplace is a community within which we
spend a significant amount of time. It is critical for
mental health as it can be both a positive
contributor to our sense of self-worth and identity,
and also a trigger of poor mental wellbeing
Communication
• Encourage senior leaders to openly and
transparently talk about their own mental
health
• Understand employees in terms of both
their work and personal lives, and
measure it
• Develop the language employees can use
to explain their mental health – not just
“stress”
Investment
• Invest in mental health provision and support
as there is a proven positive ROI. Remember,
that mental health costs the UK economy £74-
100bn per year, equating to c. £1,500 per
employee per year
• Employers should take the time to plan their
commitments to managing mental health for
their employees e.g. ‘Time to Change Employer
Pledge’
• Equip and train employees to be more
emotionally intelligent and have mental health
conversations e.g. “Mental Health First Aiders”
“We are
defined by the
things we can’t
walk away
from”
Culture
• Celebrate non-perfectionism,
mistakes and learnings
• Provide the space for employees to
share their mental health
experiences

3. 3
Keynote speaker notes:
Lord Dennis Stevenson

4. 4
Keynote speaker notes: Lord Dennis Stevenson
Introduction
What are my credentials to talk to you about mental health?
First of all, my family likes me to modify my pretensions! I am not a
professional - neither a shrink nor an academic.
I have had what is called in trendy circles “the lived experience”. That is to say
from time to time, (the last time being in 2007), I have suffered from clinical
depression.
This has led to me getting involved in that world. Quite a few years ago, I set up
what is probably the world’s leading mental health research foundation, MQ.
Three years or so ago, I introduced the Mental Health Discrimination Bill which
is a major piece of legislation affecting mental health in the UK.
Most recently with Paul Farmer, the CEO of Mind, I’ve produced a report and
executive summary for the Prime Minister called Thriving at Work - the latter
being the only thing I’d recommend anyone to read!
My own experience
Some 25 years ago, I literally had a “pain in my tummy” at a time when
everything was brilliant in my life. The pain became anxiety which transformed
into something pretty nasty - it may or may not have been clinical depression.
This has recurred, happily not too frequently, over time. I was initially very
stupid in dealing with it - puritan views on pills etc. - but gradually got better at
it. This may be the reason I haven’t had an attack since 2007. Here are some
further thoughts:
• There was no obvious external cause. Of course much clinical depression
does have external causes, but it is important to understand that it
frequently just happens.
• There is a complete difference between big “D” and little “d” depression
- being Chairman of a bank which I was, or hearing that my four year old
great nephew had kidney cancer, was not much fun but nor was it anything
to do with big “D” depression.
D
d
Thriving at Work
(Stevenson and
Farmer, 2017)

5. 5
Keynote speaker notes: Lord Dennis Stevenson
• Although I have to accept that objectively compared to a number of
sufferers, for example the heroic Stephen Fry, I’m a mild sufferer, it is by a
long way the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. It is much worse than
breaking my leg in ten places which I did once.
• Finally, I was “brave” when I agreed to “come out” when Government
asked me to appear in an advertising campaign. But I was only brave once as
everyone said how wonderful I was! This has been the pattern ever since. So
it’s important to understand that “coming out” is a plus rather than a minus.
Observations of the mental health world
Too much use is made of that dishonest word “spectrum” to cover up the
fact that they don’t really know what bipolar, depression, schizophrenia
etc. are. Just as there was a need 20 or 30 years ago to inject more definition
into “cancer”, so there is an urgent need to inject it into mental health health.
Contrary to much of the hype, neuroscience has not delivered practical
conclusions. Again, far too much talking up and raising expectations.
Does that mean that neuroscience is useless? Not at all! Quite the reverse. I
firmly believe it will make a huge difference over the next few decades. But it is
important that no one takes it out of perspective and / or believes headlines
about “brain projects”.
By contrast, the area where there has been huge improvement helping millions
of human beings is in the area of talking therapies. Yes, of course there are
quacks, some well meaning, some not. But all over the world a small number
of people who apply academic rigour and discipline are finding talking
therapies that really help. For example, Professor Christopher Fairburn at
Oxford University who has dramatically improved the treatment of eating
disorders.
However, it is important to realise that talking therapies are not antithetical
to pharmacological solutions. In many, if not most situations, the right way
forward is a mixture of pharmaceutical and psychological solutions. This has
been incredibly difficult to achieve since there is an absurd fragmentation and
siloisation in the world.
The human race knows very little about what goes on in the brain. This is in sharp contrast to a lot of
the sensationalist and expectation raising PR, not just from the media not but scientists as well.
“So far, neuroscience
has made little or no
contribution to
patients in the clinic”,
(Tom Insel, Head of
National Institute of
Mental Health)
‘Finally, I was “brave”
when I agreed to
“come out”’

6. 6
Keynote speaker notes: Lord Dennis Stevenson
My advice to sufferers
• Be your own project manager. But recognise that someone who is
mentally unwell will find it difficult to play that role and so there is normally
a need for someone else to be the project manager, be it a husband or
wife or whomever. Carers need to understand they will get no emotional
response from their patients unlike with most illnesses. However, patients
will benefit from what they do and carers must battle on.
• In the spirit of project management, it is important to keep up with developments in the field.
Knowledge, diagnosis and therapies are very fragmented. Therefore, get online, find out who the key
people are and keep following them.
• Take 2nd, 3rd, 4th opinions as often as you can. Expectations are hugely important in dealing with
mental health. If you don’t try and “solve” the problem overnight (a natural reaction in many of us) but
simply adjust your expectations downward, you have a much better chance of learning to live with it,
which leads to my wife’s point…
• “Be accepting of it”. That is to say, don’t think of yourself as “curing” it, but expect it to come back.
“Relax” into it. For what it’s worth, this has been the single most important step in my learning to handle
my periodic problems with “depression”.
Improving mental health at work
• “Mental health” is not an illness and the sooner everyone realises that, just
as they do for physical health, the less problems we will have.
• All of us have “mental health” and need to learn how to handle it. If we
learn how to manage our own mental health, we will all become much better
at spotting mental health problems among colleagues at work and
helping them to deal with its challenges.
• To aid the process, the mental health of anyone’s employees should be
a standard item in performance reviews in addition to standard education
and briefing on mental health issues.
• To leave the most important point to last - in my experience the single most
effective way of transforming the treatment of mental health at work is for
senior people to talk very openly about their own mental health and
their own mental health problems. I can give very good examples of this.
But to revert to the point already made, the almost universal reaction is one
of approval!
“It’s not so long since we
didn’t know how to deal
with a cut finger without
medical help. We now
need to learn how to deal
with cut minds”
(Professor Ian Goodyer)
Read the Thriving at Work report. Seriously! (Or at least read the Executive Summary). The “guts” of the
report are as follows:
I see one or two sufferers a week as a result of my own experience being known, and also because of the
inadequacies of much of the supply side.