Diversity in mental health on World Mental Health Day

Panel discussion

(Event Summary)

Mental health challenges are common and can happen to anyone

Okubo: I feel like for the last three years or so, with the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been massive changes to our environment, which have significantly impacted our mental health. Is it impossible to avoid experiencing mental fatigue or mental health challenges?

Dr. Omuro: As long as we are alive, we have our weak points even without the recent changes to our environment. In particular, in this day and age, we receive a vast amount of information from computers and smartphones, and our brains have to process and digest this information. There are truly a lot of benefits from this, but at the same time, this is a heavy load on our brains, leading us to experience mental health challenges. This phenomenon may be something inevitable, like how humans evolving to walk on two feet caused lower back pain. Similarly, I think we should live our lives knowing that humans who live in modern society can not completely avoid mental health challenges.

Okubo: That makes sense. Our brains frequently get stressed out with the vast amount of information that gets spread around and its speed. I see one reason why it may be easy for us to go through mental health challenges.

Speaking of stress, I think there are moments when you realize that you are currently feeling stressed in various situations. For example, when you are with someone you do not necessarily get along with or someone mad at you, being close to someone you don’t know or working with someone you don’t really know. Would being objectively aware of our own state be effective in terms of maintaining our mental health?

Dr. Omuro: First, being objectively aware of our own mental state is crucial. The specs of the human body haven’t changed considerably for 200,000 years. If we compare it to smartphones, it’s like having the latest apps being installed one after another even though our brains are still equivalent to an old phone. Our bodies haven’t evolved, but it’s as if more and more apps are getting installed every day and weighing us down.

I think that the speed human body evolves isn’t the same as the speed of innovation, which sometimes throws us off balance, and one thing that this causes is mental health challenges. That’s why there’s nothing unusual about experiencing mental health challenges as we live in modern society.

If we compare this again to smartphones, I think it’s important to keep in mind how much battery we have left as we go about our lives, such as by not opening too many apps at once or frequently recharging to prevent our batteries run low etc.

*Photo on the right: Dr. Masashi Omuro, on the left: Rie Okubo

Okubo: It means that to prevent mental health challenges, we should pick up on the signs that appear physically and mentally in our everyday lives while living under frequent stress. I also understand that it’s not about having experienced mental health challenges in the past or being mentally strong or weak – we can not completely avoid the possibility of experiencing mental health challenges in modern society because they result from the imbalance between the speed of our human bodies evolution and the speed of innovation.

Dr. Omuro: Mental health challenges happen from a combination of diverse factors. Within these factors, everyone has their own conditions of certain events causing more stress than others. I think we can not simply split people into being mentally “strong” or “weak.” It’s more about combination. That is, the ability of someone withstanding a certain situation may vary depending on the environment they are in. We are all working in complicated variables today, and I personally feel that anyone could potentially experience mental health challenges.

Mental imbalance and how to handle it

Okubo: What are some of the things that can throw our mental state off balance?

Dr. Omuro: For example, when you can’t sleep because your tasks keep piling up or something in particular keeps bothering you, you might become anxious about turning on your computer or checking your email.

Okubo: I have experienced that myself, but what should we do then? Is there anything that we can do?

Dr. Omuro: There are two measures for this.

The first one is avoid piling up your tasks due to the workload and mental load stemming. Comparing this to a computer, if we open many Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files simultaneously, our computer runs slower and slower. We can say the same about our own mental state – even if we install a lot of apps and try to multitask, we can’t run them all at the same time because the human body is still an old phone. Multitasking is really just repeating single tasks, so the first way of not accumulating stress in your environment is to make a change so that you deal with your tasks one at a time in order and reduce the size of your tasks you work on at the same time as much as possible.  For example, a sort of hack to handle this well is to not let relatively small tasks like email pile up.

The second key point is to rest and recuperate. When you feel you are experiencing mental health challenges more often in your daily life, I think it’s good to increase your rest and recuperate accordingly.

What to do when you discover signs of mental health challenges in others

Okubo: Remote work has spread in Japan due to COVID-19 pandemic. As we often don’t see each other’s faces because we may have our cameras off even during online meetings, there are cases when someone we thought was doing well suddenly takes a leave. After the pandemic, Deloitte Tohmatsu Group has also shifted to having everyone mostly work from home. Do you have any advice for what we can do for those around us?

Dr. Omuro: Of course, it’s best to talk with someone when you can really take the time to do so, such as one-on-one meeting, but it’s inevitably more difficult to notice changes online compared to when working in person. If someone takes a leave when working remotely, it tends to feel abrupt to those around them.  There actually are signs that people are going through mental health challenges, such as gradually becoming slower at replying to emails, communicating less, and submitting things a bit slower. Ideally, we would notice these signs, but could be difficult because some people really push themselves by working harder and harder until the very moment they burn out.

For someone who can express themselves well during a one-on-one, they may disclose their concerns or worries. Many companies quantitatively measure stress levels with surveys. It’s easy to notice the signs from someone who gradually becomes unwell in stages in a way that’s visible, but honestly there still are difficult cases to notice the signs.

Okubo: It’s important to proactively express our concerns and worries and, in certain cases, get someone to objectively check/understand your mental health state such as by consulting with Dr. Omuro or an external counselor through programs such as EAP (*2). We may be able to recognize the state of our mental health that we couldn’t have realized on our own by talking with others, instead of closing it off by thinking “talking to others will not solve the problem” or “others will not understand”. There may be cases where talking with others make things better for ourselves and those around us.

^{_{(*2) EAP: Employee Assistance Program. A support system/service where employees can receive consultations or counseling with specialists (clinical psychologists, industrial counselors, career consultants, and others) through an external consultation service with free of charge. Deloitte Tohmatsu Group’s EAP provides solutions to individuals and companies from the perspective of psychology and behavioral science with the goal of improving productivity in the workplace. It offers consultation on a wide variety of topics related to both work and personal life regardless of their severity.}}

Dr. Omuro: That’s right. I think it would be great if people in Japan can talk to someone more about our current state or the situation they are in. Let me tell you an example I heard before. A supervisor sensed that one of their members didn’t seem well and put a counseling pamphlet (EAP) on their desk. When the member returned to their desk and noticed the pamphlet, they felt ever worse. The supervisor did so to help, but it was all of a sudden, trying to approach the challenge without saying anything. Avoiding direct communication led to miscommunication. From that member’s perspective, this happened out of blue. Even if it was indirect, when your mental state is not well, something small that you would have not cared if you were feeling well can lead to self-denial. I felt that this was a case when indirect kindness or empathy was not received in the way intended and instead, backfired.

Okubo: I see what you mean. Considering your example, when there’s someone we work with who, from our perspective, we think is showing signs of a mental health challenge, how can we reach out to them in an appropriate way?

Dr. Omuro: This doesn’t apply to everyone, but I get the impression that many people close themselves off when someone shows concerns about their mental health. Even if there’s someone you think may be going through mental health challenge, please remember what I said earlier about how our mental health is linked to our body. I think that talking with people focusing on their physical health would be good. For example, just checking whether they’ve been tired lately or have been getting sunlight could make a difference. We just want to be careful because even if we start by discussing physical symptoms, in many cases, people will close themselves off if being asked “Have you been tired lately? It could potentially be a mental health challenge – why not visit a mental clinic?” I think it’s better to first ask about their symptoms and habits in terms of their physical health and communicate that you’re worried about them.

Practice self-care and keep in mind that we have diverse choices

Dr. Omuro: Small habits are key, such as moving our bodies even just a bit, going outside, and talking to someone about our concerns. Of course, when things are rough, I can also provide individual consultations as an industrial physician.

Okubo: While keeping self-care in mind, it is also sometimes important to consult with a specialist, those around you, or someone available through the EAP or an doctor to take in an objective perspective. Through today’s session, I reaffirmed that our mental state is prone to changes and mental health challenges can happen to anyone. Thank you.

One of Deloitte Tohmatsu Group’s Shared Values is “Take care of each other: We look out for one another and prioritize respect, fairness, development, and well-being.” In particular, as we can not visually see mental health challenges, they can be difficult to recognize them even in ourselves. We need to all be aware of this fact and gain better understanding in this topic while cooperating with each other. Deloitte Tohmatsu Group recognizes that people’s mental states not only change but also vary depending on the individual, and we will continue to empower creating an inclusive environment going forward.

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