Celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week
Here at Revaia, we’re celebrating World Mental Health Week. What is World Mental Health Week, you ask? We’ll answer that & much more in this editorial!
The subject of mental health in the workplace has taken over the public discourse in recent years. Perhaps surprisingly, the internationally recognized day has been around since 1992. In the spirit of recognizing this important topic, we wanted to share a bit of history, explore why mental health is important in the context of today’s always-on world, consider mental health taboos in Europe, and share how we incorporate conscious efforts to foster mental health at Revaia.
World Mental Health Day is officially celebrated on October 10th of each year. The day of mental health awareness, education and advocacy is an initiative of the World Federation for Mental Health — an international NGO founded way back in 1948 around the same time as the United Nations. Originally, the event was a broad-based day of awareness on taboo issues around mental health and wellbeing and associated social stigmas. A couple years into the annual event, the WFMH started introducing themes to shed light on specific disorders, concerns or trends in the mental health space. This year, for instance, the theme was to make mental health and well-being for all a global priority. Here are a few others from years past:
- Women and Mental Health (1996)
- Mental and Physical Health Across the Life Span (2005)
- Mental Health in A Changing World: The Impact of Culture and Diversity (2007)
- The Great Push: Investing in Mental Health (2011)
- Mental health in the workplace (2017)
- Mental Health in an Unequal World (2021)
Implicitly, we all know mental health is important. Everyone, to one degree or another, experiences adverse mental health outcomes, and as such, this movement is a relatable, global phenomenon. In the past several years alone, we’ve witnessed a number of exogenous events that have had a critical impact on the mental health of people of all ages, socioeconomic statuses, and countries. Most notably, the pandemic served as a worldwide crisis in mental health, the first of its kind in the modern era. Combined with the global rise of authoritarianism, looming economic recession, The Great Resignation and risk of an expanding war in the heart of Europe, there is no shortage of negative stimuli affecting our wellbeing.
The good news: the startup ecosystem has responded. In the US and Europe, the number of companies focused on mental health and wellbeing (a sub-set of the health-tech vertical) has exploded. As always, the company missions vary on a range across a set of important services, starting with meditation and mindfulness apps, progressing into content and resources dedicated to therapy and diagnostics, all the way to on-demand therapy and digital health prescriptions. A clear path for many of these companies was the B2B route: partnering with companies who wanted to provide meaningful help to their employees but didn’t quite know how. For more details on mental health startups, check out this piece from Kyle’s personal newsletter from one year ago.
Work and career often falls squarely within this realm — a source of stress, anxiety and in some cases frustration. According to the Harvard Business Review, it’s a new era for mental health at work. However, in many countries, including France, the subject simply wasn’t discussed openly and as a result exacerbated problems related to mental health in the workplace. A recent video series by a mental health tech company, Teale, gave prominent entrepreneurs and venture capitalists the opportunity to share their intimate experiences with burnout and stress related to work and career. #Untold is a fascinating docu-series featuring notable industry leaders including Jean de la Rochebrand, Partner at Kima Ventures, Clara Chappaz, Director of La French Tech and Emmanuel Goldstein, CEO of Morgan Stanley France.
At Revaia, we’ve partnered with Moka.care, a mental healthcare tech company serving businesses and employees with on-the-go therapy, psychological services and a dedicated HR interface. With the aim to make mental health a strength of your business, they provide us with content, meditation sessions and much, much more to maintain a positive, healthy and mindful work environment.
