Rise in UK work-related suicides shines light on mental health challenges

Research shows that one in four employees in the UK has experienced suicidal thoughts while at work and one in five don’t feel comfortable talking to their employer about their mental health. The university sector, in particular, is facing a number of challenges in this area – we’ll speak to a health and safety lawyer about that. 

This is research by the suicide prevention charity Ripple and is covered in the latest edition of IOSH magazine. It shows a person is 62 times more likely to die from suicide than in a fire. The organisation is calling on legislators and workplaces to make suicide prevention mandatory and entrenched in existing health and safety policies.

As IOSH flags up, the World Health Organization has issued guidelines on mental health at work to help employers. It provides evidence-based recommendations to promote mental health, prevent mental health conditions and enable people living with mental health conditions to thrive. The recommendations cover organisational and individual interventions, manager and worker training, returning to work, and gaining employment. An estimated 15% of working-age adults have a mental disorder at any point in time, so it is a big issue.

So let’s get a view on what employers could and should be doing. Zoe Betts is a health and safety lawyer and she joined me by video-link to discuss it:

Zoe Betts: “Employers in general, but that includes HR professionals as well as health and safety professionals, really need to understand that physical safety and mental safety, or physical health and mental health, are two sides of the same coin and employers really can't prioritise one over the other. So, I think really, the fact that the World Health Organisation produced these guidelines last year, we're now about five or six months on, I think the point to make, really, is if employers aren't aware of it then perhaps, they should be and if they are aware of it then how are they getting on with embedding those guidelines into their own workplaces?”

Joe Glavina: “So what’s the advice you’re giving to clients, Zoe?”

Zoe Betts: “Yes, so we're advising our clients to be active rather than passive when it comes to risk assessing their workplaces, when it comes to mental health and stress, and trying to be proactive. We’ve got to take steps to reduce the stigma around mental health and to make sure that we are providing proper workplaces where we've thought about how to manage long hours, we're tackling unmanageable workloads - that's how we prevent the problem in the first place - but we also need to provide training. We're not trying to make people into mental health experts, but we are trying to make sure that they can spot the signs if somebody's starting to suffer from mental health condition and you can get that early intervention approach. That's how we also reduce stigma by keeping those conversations alive, and it's also about support. If we've got an employee who has an existing mental health condition then what reasonable adjustments might the employer need to make in the workplace? Or if somebody has been off for a period of absence with a mental health condition and they want to return to work, how can the employer support that? This isn't just about helping people to cope, I think it's about helping people to thrive, because that's the way that the employee will become the valuable and productive worker that they want to be, but also that the employer wants them to be.”

Joe Glavina: “This latest research that’s highlighted in the IOSH magazine shows one in four employees in the UK has experienced suicidal thoughts while at work and one in five don’t feel comfortable talking to their employer about possible struggles with mental health. I know you work with a number of clients in the university sector where this is a big issue. Can you tell me about that?”
Zoe Betts: “Yes, I can, and it's sad in a way that we, myself and my colleagues, have so much experience in this. Just to put the problem into context. I'm aware that there is a suicide every 90 minutes in the UK and that is simply unacceptable, every 90 minutes, and that's compared with the more traditional deaths in the workplace, if I can put it that way, the catastrophic safety incidents, they generally occur, on average, every one or two or three days and we still regard that number, quite rightly, has been too high. So, a suicide, a loss of life to suicide every 90 minutes, is simply staggering and you're right, we do have experience in advising our clients in the higher education sector because of student suicides, incredibly distressing cases that clearly need to be handled with a great deal of sensitivity and there are some really tricky issues here. There’s a tension between letting what is, in effect, an adult, live their life, make their choices and, to some degree, make mistakes. Students for the first time want to be away from the prying eyes of parents and adults and yet at the same time you have an employer, you have a duty of care, and you've got to provide a degree of really effective and appropriate pastoral care and guidance. So, these cases are really difficult to navigate but I've also got cases in other sectors. So I had a client recently where, very sadly, a former employee took his own life and the issues that were explored at that coroner's inquest were all to do with periods of absence from work, and then return to work. So I think there has to be a really greater acceptance that mental health is a multifactorial issue and it would be naive to think that work isn't going to be one of those factors. So that's the sort of advice that I've been giving recently.”

Joe Glavina: “In cases of suicide, Zoe, there will be coroner's inquest so there will be close scrutiny of any failings in supporting the individual, lack of due care, etcetera. So, you’d hope the employer is able to evidence the fact they’ve been proactive and taken the right steps. Is that right?”

Zoe Betts: “Yes, I think that's right, Joe. I’m always one of those lawyers that wants to be quite pragmatic and quite commercial. I don't want health and safety to become a paper exercise, or a tick box exercise, and I think there is some concern amongst wider society that certain policies and procedures - and that will extend to mental health within the workplace  - are simply that, just a nod, or paying lip service to the issue. However, I have had enough experience in this to know that you're absolutely right, there is a place for paperwork, there has to be an evidential audit trail, if an organisation is going to try to demonstrate how it has taken steps to, first of all, assess the scale of the problem, that's your risk assessment, and then to put in place those reasonable controls to either eliminate the risk completely or reduce it to a level which is which is acceptable. You do need to be able to show what you've done and that does generally start with policies and procedures. You've got to show how you've implemented that because policies and procedures are simply documents but what we like to see is how do they live in practice? What is it that the organisation does to give life and to give true meaning to those documents? We don't want to be seen to be paying lip service, we want to be able to demonstrate that, insofar as we can within the scope of our business, we've accepted this as an issue, we've dealt with it appropriately, we offer the support, the training, we signpost people in the appropriate way, and then you would hope that even if there is some sort of investigation that you have a credible story to tell and that you can demonstrably show that you've supported your workforce. That really is what every client wants to be able to do.”

The WHO’s guidelines on mental health was published in September last year. It’s very detailed at 134 pages, and full of very good, helpful, practical advice centred on a number of key recommendations. We have put a link to it in the transcript of this programme.

LINKS
- Link to the World Health Organisation’s guidelines on mental health