Mental Health Illness is not just about having a “Bad Day” it’s a constant feeling of a “Bad Day” that never seems to let up day or night and can be completely exhausting and destroying.

Dragging yourself about trying to keep up with your daily life from looking after a family to working and looking after a family the demands on us all are increasing every day to be this person that can juggle what feels like a hundred balls in the air all at once.

Add to the mix of feeling this way and the perceived taboo of talking about anything to do with mental health you end up with a subject that is brushed over and swept away as if it didn’t exist but for far too many people it’s a crippling, destroying illness that even family and friends don’t understand.

Mental Health Illness is a horrible word…it conjures up all sorts of images of people on the edge of life, people to be scared of and feared for what they might do! News reports often mention the perpetrator had “Mental Health Problems” casting a reflection on all who have been diagnosed with it.

It is a sad fact that no matter who you are you could, at some point in your life, be a victim ..I use the term victim because you don’t chose to have it it seems to chose you and the stronger a person you think you are the worse it seems to be.

The whole attitude to our “Mental Health” has to change and in some areas things have started to improve but there is still a long way to go.

Coping when you suffer from the many forms of Mental Health issues can be a real problem when you are also trying to hold down a job. Feeling like you can’t get up out of bed let alone be at your desk working productively has caused many employees to ring in sick blaming their absence on many other things too afraid to admit how they really feel.

Lucky for some employees many of the larger companies have recognised their employees mental wellbeing is just as important as their physical one and have introduced ways to combat stress.

Apple, Google, Nike, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Google, AOL, Yahoo, Deutsche Bank, Proctor & Gamble are but a few of the companies who have realised that if you don’t have happy, well staff who are not working to full capacity you do not have a business that is going to work well and that of course will reflect on staff moral and productivity.

All those companies have chosen to adopt a Mindfulness Mediation policy. Mindfulness, through many neuroscientific studies, has been proven to actually alter the brain size in people who practise mediation every day leading to happier, more balanced and less stressed staff.

In all offices you are obliged to have a First Aid kit for physical wounds that you can see but how about the mental wounds your staff are suffering from…where is that First Aid Kit?

No matter what your office size or staff number as an employer you have a duty, to not only your business that you have spent a long time building, but to your staff, who without them you would not have a business.

We have been successfully running Mindfulness work shops in many businesses, councils and schools who have all said that they have benefited greatly and have show that they have become happier, more productive and less angry and stressed.

Some businesses have taken on board the need to look after their staffs mental health needs and have designated a member of staff to train how to deliver Mindfulness to the staff which enables a constant stream of practice.

Hopefully in the not too distant future looking after  employees mental wellbeing as well as their physical one will be an every day occurrence and plans will be put in place to combat and assist staff with an honest open policy enabling them to ring and say why they are away and not have to lie.