Mental Health in Corporate America. 

Essays | Olivia Santos | August 31th, 2024.

To the rest of the world, the United States may look like a powerhouse of corporations. Even more than that, the United States is renowned for its other aspects: sports, diversity, and opportunity. However, this does not entirely mean that these areas of the country are perfect; Marcus Thompson II, lead columnist for The Athletic, in “Simone Biles and the Most Human Meaning of Courage,” describes Simone Biles’ courage throughout her journey to drop out of the gymnastics team final due to her declining mental health. In the American corporate world, courage is also important because employees are faced with the pressure of their mental health versus their work. Still, the difference between Simone Biles and an average employee’s life is not only that Biles is an Olympic gold medalist, but Biles has access to mental healthcare, and average employees may not. The question arises: To what extent should American corporate workplaces be responsible for employee mental health? To be able to fully support employees in a way that is not only beneficial for them but beneficial for the progress of the United States, American corporate workplaces should be extensively responsible for employee mental health. To be responsible, corporations must implement resources for mental health awareness in their businesses. This is because of the productivity that may be affected because of the state of employee mental health and overall amelioration of the workplace environment due to more transparency between employees and their employers.

There is a certain effect mental health has on the productivity of workers. According to Elena Cottini and Claudio Lucifora, associate professor and professor of economics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, respectively, “Workers with better mental health are generally reported to be more productive, less likely to suffer from illnesses, and less subject to sickness leave” (959). If certain programs such as mental health classes and resources were implemented throughout the corporation itself, it would be easier for employees to have their mental health taken care of while at their jobs, which, as a result, would improve productivity. Supporting Cottini and Lucifora, Susan Mayor, a medical journalist from the British Medical Journal, summarizes a study on mental health issues in workplaces, saying the “results show that a range of relatively simple [programs] produce small but overall positive effects across an entire workforce” (1). These programs, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, could reduce workers’ absenteeism due to poor mental health. Timothy Dunnagan, a dean at the College of Health Sciences at Boise State University, and his colleagues contest this notion, claiming that, “Worksite health promotion programs play a limited role in ameliorating work-related mental health outcomes. Rather, to address stress, anger, and depression, an organizational development approach is recommended” (1079). Additionally, they argue that “effort should be made to look for and address the work-related causes of depression and anger,” something that J. Camille Hall, former vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Missouri, and her colleagues explore through a survey done on the perspectives of black women in the workplace. One response says, “It’s like you don’t have to open your mouth but walk into a situation and you’re perceived as being hostile. … You start questioning stuff. Am I really hostile?” (213) However, an aspect of work-related mental health issues that is so methodically ingrained in a business should be a call to reorganize a business, and not a mental health program or resource. Given this, though, it is still important to recognize that work-related stress can be reduced through these resources. Additionally, an employee’s personal life should also be considered in these possible mental health resources because they could affect a worker’s performance. Nonetheless, corporations would not implement these resources based on word and promise alone, therefore calling for economic evidence. 

The effect on corporations’ budgeting is a major motivator for introducing mental health resources in a professional environment. Todor Penev, senior vice president at Aon, a management consulting company, and his colleagues find that, “Somewhere between 30% and 50% of adults experience mental illness over their lifetimes, resulting in more than $200 billion annually in health care utilization and lost work productivity.” To expand on this, Dan Witters, a research director for the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, and Sangeeta Agrawal, a research manager for Gallup, state that, “Generalized across the U.S. workforce, this missed work is estimated to cost the economy $47.6 billion annually in lost productivity.” This directly calls for more responsibility placed on corporations for mental health, considering that if employees’ mental states were supported significantly more, corporations would be able to make more profit, progressing the American economy. It is important to prioritize the well-being of the economy and the United States’ financial progress, but it is also important to explore the effects an environment of transparency regarding mental health can have on a workplace.

Currently, it is taboo to involve the discussion of mental health in businesses. For example, in the “2023 Work in America Survey” by the American Psychological Association, 43% of employees “reported worrying that if they told their employer about a mental health condition, it would harm them in the workplace.” This displays the exigence behind the need for mental health resources in American corporations; by eliminating this taboo in the workplace, the workplace environment and the security of employees would be strengthened, consequently ameliorating mental health and workers’ feelings toward their jobs. Steph Brown, a journalist for Financial Management, provides an opposite perspective: “Over 1 in 4 (29%) of people now feel comfortable enough to openly disclose to their employer if they need time off due to poor mental health.” While this may be true, it is still important to recognize that this change may be slow. Breaking down the barrier of the discussion of mental health in a work environment still exists, and it cannot be fully conquered without further and faster progress. This directly points to mental health resources in corporations to help this progress. Roni Jacobson, a contributing writer for CNBC, Jacobson refutes Brown’s ideas, saying “... in a 2010 survey of U.K. employers, about 40 percent said they considered hiring someone with a mental illness to be a ‘significant risk’ to the company” (28). This stigma should be recognized as strictly discriminatory, considering that people with mental illnesses usually have limited options for treating themselves, seeing as mental health resources, such as medication, are expensive and hard to come by. Hemangi Modi, a former analyst for the AAMC Research and Action Institute, and her colleagues define these barriers as “lack of available providers, inadequate insurance coverage, high out-of-pocket costs, and fragmented care.” Ultimately, these potential employees do not have access to the help they need to be fully functioning in the eyes of an employer, and therefore, to make these resources readily available for the mentally ill, corporations should be significantly more responsible for offering these resources. Still, Arnstein Mykletun and Samuel B. Harvey, professors at the Workplace Mental Health Research Program at the School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Australia, respectively, bring up a valid point: “One of the major problems in attempting to prevent mental disorders is the diversity of potential risk factors, many of which are difficult or impossible to alter, such as genes and major life events” (868). These “major life events” are separate from the workplace, and as a result, employers may feel that it would be unwise to mix these parts of an employee’s life. Angela Martin, Ph.D. in management from the University of Tasmania, and her colleagues add to this, saying, “Managers [turn] their attention to understanding the implications for the workplace and how those impacts need to be managed…They [need] to be mindful of the boundaries of their professional relationship with their employee” (57, 58). While the separation of work and personal life has been a precedent set for many years, there is still no doubt that what affects employees in their personal lives may affect them in the workplace as well. Involving one’s personal life in the workplace only creates more transparency between workers and their employers which can be better used to ameliorate a workplace environment and effectively increase productivity as stated previously. 

Mental health resources must also be surveyed to provide accessible methods for corporations. For example, the World Health Organization, an intergovernmental organization for public safety and health, recommends simply introducing psychoeducation, described as “providing information to people about their mental health condition, including information about their symptoms, factors that may have positive or negative impacts on their condition and options for treatment” (67). By informing employees about mental illness, the workplace environment could immediately be ameliorated because it would create less of a taboo regarding mental health in a professional environment. Employees would most likely feel more comfortable with talking about their mental health if their workplace is more willing to discuss it because of increased access to mental health information. Nevertheless, although the introduction of psychoeducation into professional environments may implicate benefits to employees through added awareness, this solution is limited since psychoeducation is still a new topic, thus businesses may not feel secure enough to implement it. Julie Rawe, a special projects editor at Understood, a newspaper, introduces another mental health resource that could be utilized in the workplace when she mentions an employee assistance program. This program could effectively “[p]rovide direct access to mental health professionals via phone and/or in-person.” Therefore, employees would have readily available access to professionals who could better their mental health without the burden of having to pay for such needs. However, this solution could be limited, since employee assistance programs may cost money for companies to maintain, depending on the level of support they choose to provide for their employees. The money spent on these programs could be taken from employees’ salaries and could harm employees as a whole. Nevertheless, these programs are still worth looking into for companies that recognize their need for mental health care in the workplace. Another solution is described by Ron Goetzel, senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and his colleagues: “a ‘scorecard’ … by which the employers can gauge the extent to which they have implemented best and promising practices, and their progress in achieving a culture of health and well-being at the workplace, particularly in mental health” (327). This solution would implicate more self-awareness of an employee’s mental health and thus create a more transparent and healthy environment. However, this solution is still limited because the diligence revolving around a scorecard could be overridden without any employee incentive to continue using such scorecards.

To ensure that corporations enact mental health programs and resources in their environments, legislation is necessary. A current piece of legislation that somewhat does so is the Americans with Disabilities Act. The U.S. Department of Labor claims that this act prohibits “discrimination against people with disabilities in several areas,” which includes mental health. While this law encompasses how employers can hire people, it does not encompass what other requirements corporations must follow. To further this, the law would either need to be modified to require American corporations to practice some sort of mental health program or offer resources to their employees. Other than this, a new law would have to be proposed to encompass this rule. While there would be a positive implication for the employees who are given these resources and programs, as they would be more likely to be productive as stated previously, this solution would be extremely limited because of the difficult process involving passing a law or modifying one. It is unlikely that the American government would immediately pass a law or modify the ADA to include this specific piece of legislation without extensive public outrage and desire.

Since companies would likely not fulfill mental health practices because of money and lack of motivation, they should receive tax incentives from the government, allowing for tax breaks. This would therefore force businesses to prioritize the well-being of their employees on a mental level and apply the practices mentioned previously, which would therefore increase productivity and mental health transparency in workplaces. Nonetheless, the execution of these practices due to tax breaks may not address the full extent of employees’ needs, since corporations will likely only enact practices that accomplish the bare minimum. This could be because the amount of money needed to optimize mental health resources could still be expensive, even with tax breaks. Because of these limitations, it may be believed that corporations should still not be responsible for the amelioration of their employees’ mental health. The idea that one’s personal life should not interfere with one’s work is still a widely believed mindset, but one that can be harmful to a company’s productivity and work environment. Employees still need support, with or without a company’s responsibility for mental health, and these companies need to start realizing these mental health resources with or without specific incentives.