Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.
Within ICBA’s Wellness Program are links to other amazing resources that people may find helpful. On stigma, there’s a great online course from the Canadian Association of Mental Health that is worth your time.
It includes a slide on the equation of stigma:
Prejudice (attitudes) + Discrimination (responses) = Stigma
For too long, mental health issues were treated as a weakness, or a character flaw, or as something that could be overcome with the snap of the fingers. We know now that mental health is like so many physical injuries – it takes time to heal, to learn how to live with these things, to get meds right, to talk and to listen to experts and loved ones, to deal with these issues. There are no shortcuts.
But our attitudes need to shift – even in our own minds. No more knee jerk suspicion that someone might be “faking it” to get time off, or that a person is “weak” for struggling with these issues. We need to open our hearts and our ears to what they’re saying.
That’s how we break the stigma around mental health, once and for all.
ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 50 companies, and thousands of construction professionals, better understand mental health. The program is free for ICBA members — see icba.ca/wellness.
