Month: June 2022

  • The mental health benefits of employment

    The mental health benefits of employment

    Unsupportive workplaces, work-related stress and burn-out can all have a negative impact on our mental health. Supportive workplaces can actually boost mental well being and promote a healthy lifestyle.

    Experts have found strong evidence that unemployment is connected to poor mental health outcomes. 

    On the other hand, employment can have significant benefits for a person’s mental health, and may even support recovery for people living with a mental illness.

    Here are 6 mental health benefits employment offers:

    1. Purpose and meaning

    Having a job can give you a sense of purpose and meaning – and a reason to get out of bed every morning. 

    Some people find their job meaningful because it has a positive impact in the world. Others find meaning by interacting with their colleagues and customers and being part of a team. 

    Earning money to support your family or save up for future goals can also give you a sense of purpose and satisfaction.

    2. Self esteem and confidence

    Self esteem – the way we feel about ourselves – has clear links to our overall health and wellbeing. 

    Working in a safe and supportive environment can help you grow your confidence and build your self esteem.

     A job gives you the opportunity to use your skills, learn new things and receive positive feedback from supervisors, colleagues and customers. 

    Overtime, these can contribute to greater confidence and help you feel ready to take on new challenges.

    3. Structure and routine

    Having a job can bring structure and routine to your life. 

    While everyone has different needs when it comes to the ideal level of structure at work, a healthy amount may help you cope better with change and feel more stable through the ups and downs. 

    Routine and structure can have a particularly positive effect for some mental health conditions such as bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. 

    Doctors often recommend people with bipolar disorder avoid shift work and nighttime hours because of the disruptive effect it can have on mood and stability.

    4. Social connection and support

    Connecting with other people in a meaningful way is one of the pillars of mental wellbeing.

    Whether you work in a large corporation or a small team, having the chance to interact with others can help you feel more connected and included. 

    Working in a team means others rely on your input which can help with motivation and purpose.

    Working with others also gives you the chance to expand your support network and reach out for help when you need it. 

    Many employers are open to providing accommodations at work so you can look after your mental health and feel supported. 

    Colleagues can also be a good source of support and understanding for things at work and outside of work.

    5. Financial security

    Poor mental health and problems with money are often closely linked. It can be hard to feel positive about the future if you’re worrying about having enough money to survive. 

    Having a job can help you gain more financial security to cover your current costs and save for the future. 

    Many jobs also come with other benefits such as sick pay, maternity leave and long service leave.

    Earning your own money can also help you feel more in control of your life. You’ll have more control over where you live, what you can spend your money on and what you want to achieve in the future. 

    Having the ability to save some of your money can help you feel more confident and positive about the future, whether you’re aiming to buy a house, go on a holiday or support your loved ones.

    6. New skills and growth

    Working gives you the chance to apply your current skills, but it also allows you to learn new skills, expand your knowledge and grow. 

    Research shows that learning is connected with mental well being and is a great way to boost your self-confidence and self-esteem. 

    Setting goals and working towards them creates positive feelings of accomplishment and achievement – and may help you feel motivated to keep progressing.

    Living with a mental health condition and looking for work

    We all experience ups and downs with our mental health throughout life, but for people living with a mental health condition symptoms can have a significant impact on their work life.

    Managing a mental illness can make it hard to hold down a job and unsupportive workplaces can exacerbate symptoms. 

    People with mental health conditions may also face barriers when looking for work.

    Taking time away from work can be an important part of recovery. In the long run, getting back to work can also contribute to recovery and have a positive impact on your mental well being. 

    If you’re living with a mental health condition and wanting to get back to work, it’s important to reach out for help if you need it. 

    Many mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and PTSD, are eligible for government funded disability employment assistance

    You can also check out NDIS eligibility if you’re living with a lifelong mental illness. These services can help you get tailored support to overcome barriers you might be facing when looking for work or managing your condition in the workplace, including accessing funding for workplace accommodations.

    Build better mental wellbeing with employment

    It’s clear that our working lives affect our mental health. When work is safe and supportive, it offers us a sense of purpose and meaning, connection with our community and greater self-confidence. 

    Along with self-care, social connection and accessing mental health services, employment can play an important role in building better mental well being.

  • Policymakers, health officials must address food insecurity

    Policymakers, health officials must address food insecurity

    Disclosures:
    Serchen studies no suitable monetary disclosures. You should see the placement paper for all authors’ relevant disclosures.


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    Entry — or lack thereof — to nutritious food immediately impacts Americans’ overall health, and much more have to be done to deal with meals and diet insecurity, according to a position paper from the ACP.

    The paper, revealed in Annals of Internal Drugs, notes that food insecurity, which roughly 10% of individuals in the U.S. encounter, “functions as a social driver of well being.” The paper also points out the snowball effect at participate in, stating that foodstuff insecurity right impacts “health status and results, which can further negatively impact work and money and improve healthcare expenses — all of which exacerbates meals insecurity.”

    Salmon, vegetables and fruit
    Source: Adobe Stock.

    “Ensuring that all persons are capable to feed on their own a healthful eating plan, with dignity, is an essential ingredient of a just culture,” Josh Serchen, BA, a wellness coverage associate for the ACP, and colleagues wrote. “ACP believes that the United States has a ethical and community wellness crucial to address food items insecurity comprehensively.”

    The effects of foodstuff insecurity can be far-achieving and diverse, based on age and other aspects. For children, food items insecurity is connected with an improved hazard for psychological and behavioral wellness problems, asthma, even worse oral overall health, cognitive problems, anemia and birth flaws, according to the ACP. In non-senior older people, foods insecurity can mean increased rates of mental wellness complications, substantial blood force, superior cholesterol, diabetes and other serious ailments, as properly as reported poorer common health and snooze. Senior older people going through food items insecurity are at risk for greater rates of depression, a lot more limitations in an exercise of every day dwelling and poorer documented wellness.

    “These overall health results can be observed in the heightened overall health care utilization rates and fees professional by meals insecure folks,” Serchen and colleagues wrote.

    The paper lists numerous tips to battle food insecurity in the U.S., addressing all events included in wellbeing care from policymakers to medical professionals.

    In its prime advice, the ACP asserts that all persons have to have to have obtain to healthful meals and “urges policymakers to make addressing food stuff insecurity and nutritional motorists of wellbeing a plan and funding precedence.”

    The ACP suggests that principal treatment physicians and other health-related specialists “undertake pursuits to improved fully grasp and mitigate foodstuff insecurity skilled by their sufferers.” Particularly, the paper notes that “screening applications and other methods for addressing foodstuff insecurity must be designed and validated” and that wellbeing treatment teams must start out screening for food stuff insecurity as aspect of normal visits. The ACP more termed for curriculum surrounding foods and nourishment insecurity to be incorporated into professional medical education, and for techniques and hospitals to “establish referral mechanisms to group and federal government resources, with monetary, complex, and policy support from policymakers and payers.”

    Yet another leading recommendation is that policymakers really should “sufficiently fund and assistance initiatives that purpose to cut down foods and nourishment insecurity and encourage protected and healthful diets,” Serchen and colleagues wrote. The authors list many methods in which policymakers can improved tackle foodstuff insecurity, this sort of as by protecting all nourishment help plans “while recognizing the require to give neighborhood versatility where feasible” streamlining nourishment assistance plan enrollment processes supporting initiatives to raise nutrition help system uptake among eligible people not which includes avoidable conditions in diet assistance applications that minimize uptake, raise stigma, maximize prices and extra and by basing nutrition assistance efforts on “strong nutritional science.”

    Other recommendations contain:

    • improving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Method (SNAP) “to greater provide the requirements and health and fitness of meals-insecure folks and households”
    • increasing CMS support and producing and testing “innovative models and waivers that integrate added benefits and functions that deal with social drivers of wellness, which includes foods insecurity” and
    • conducting investigate to far better comprehend foods and diet insecurity’s price, prevalence, severity and impression on health and wellbeing treatment.

    “The federal federal government ought to support diet investigate and coordinate investigate and other actions across federal departments and organizations,” Serchen and colleagues wrote.

  • Economic anxiety is replacing Covid fears. How to cope with recession talk and stock market drops.

    Economic anxiety is replacing Covid fears. How to cope with recession talk and stock market drops.

    We waited for vaccines, for boosters and for lockdowns to be lifted. Important daily life functions were postponed or — worse — missed. But the hope was that lifestyle would resume on the other side of the pandemic and we would make up for shed time. People fortuitous sufficient to weather conditions the pandemic with their price savings intact dreamed of owning a wedding ceremony, traveling or continuing their education.

    The preliminary response may possibly be to get treatment of one’s have, reminiscent of the hoarding of bathroom paper at the beginning of the pandemic.

    Now the inventory current market is tumbling, the value of necessities is spiking and there is converse of an impending economic downturn. The return to standard has been place off once more as the economic climate turns into the new uncertainty and limitation to contend with, and the result in of an additional bout of collective nervousness. Pandemic anxiousness centered around health and isolation. Operate and university schedules have been profoundly altered. But financial stress and anxiety can be even even more reaching and can result in a scarcity mindset that has profound psychological implications.

    When persons run out of a scarcity mindset, they attach negative thoughts, this sort of as deprivation and longing, to their incapacity to get a little something. Specially throughout financial downturns, it can become all-consuming and bring about what is acknowledged as tunnel vision. A frequent instance is dieting. Persons are inclined to obsess far more about meals when they are counting energy than when they are taking in when hungry and stopping when comprehensive. When we emphasis on what we never have, it diminishes the pleasure we get from what we do have, be that time or income.

    As one particular of my patients, who is in her 70s, mentioned, “I previously missing two years of the handful of I have still left through the pandemic, and I never have much too many a lot more stock sector cycles still left both. Now I’m fearful that I will not have money left to take a look at my grandchildren soon after having to pay my payments.” Even even though her small children maintain reminding her she essentially has more than enough money to stop by them, she no longer feels comfy paying her cash to do so. 

    For young persons, there is an elevated feeling that desires are slipping away. Housing charges and college student credit card debt are crippling their skill to lead the lives they imagined. A person 30-calendar year-outdated gentleman in my apply is anxiously hunting for a new job, hoping to land a thing before a recession sets in. “If I am likely to advance my profession, I need to have to do it now. I’m frightened of obtaining caught in the ‘last hired, very first fired’ cycle. Folks say that it’s a great time to leap ship, but I’m not so positive.” He and many many others in his technology are making distressing changes to their anticipations as the globe retains changing beneath their feet. In this ecosystem, it’s difficult to truly feel protected — a staple of mental effectively-getting.

    As the media gets filled with clips of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressing the economic system, alternatively than Dr. Anthony Fauci talking about the pandemic, we can hope anxiety about the financial system to worsen. The original response may be to take treatment of one’s individual, reminiscent of the hoarding of rest room paper at the beginning of the pandemic. But this scarcity frame of mind is harmful to a feeling of neighborhood, which would serve us far better. 

    To mitigate towards the pretty authentic and corrosive fear that there is not plenty of to go all over, we want to make use of some reverse psychology. Counterintuitively, the very best thing to do when people today are in the grip of a scarcity mindset is to be generous. Functions of generosity, be they major or little, increase our individual and collective perception of nicely-currently being and deliver us hope. Generosity permits us to imagine there is ample to go all over, which aids us take it easy. As a end result, we feel more creatively and feel better. Being aware of we have something to give, relatively than believing we have nothing to share, breaks down our protective limitations and opens us up to connecting with other people. That relationship is vital for shoring up our psychological well being when weathering a tough period. 

    One particular of my clients, a mother of two teenagers, is understandably anxious about soaring university tuition and her shrinking retirement portfolio. As she sat before me a single working day looking blank and overcome, I encouraged her to think back to what she utilized to do to make herself truly feel far better when her youngsters have been younger and she was getting a challenging working day. Her response was “bake cookies.”

    She recalled how she would make cookies for her sons and their mates, and then explained the joy she skilled when she amazed them with the goodies. Listening to the children’s laughter as they stuffed their mouths reminded her that the working day was not lost and perhaps she was not the worst mother or father ever. That perception assisted her figure out how her current anxiousness about money was impeding her means to get pleasure from investing time with her sons. She determined that night time she would go dwelling and bake cookies and try out to join with her sons from a location of like relatively than fear.

    When stress and anxiety and worry grip our hearts, it is challenging to retain our priorities straight and keep related to some others, especially in our broader local community. Our lifestyle tells us it is “every gentleman for himself,” even as history reveals us the dire repercussions of holding this attitude. We are all worn out from the pandemic and no one welcomes the quite real ache that comes with an financial downturn, but we have a selection possibly to keep linked and aid one particular one more or to go it on your own and see other individuals only as competitors for restricted resources, dragging us all down.

    By choosing generosity and link we have the opportunity to reinforce our capability to cope and reduce our anxiousness. Our financial assets may well be shrinking, but by building this preference somewhat than succumbing to a scarcity way of thinking, our sense of effectively-becoming can develop as we confront the troubles forward.