{"id":88587,"date":"2018-02-01T15:05:19","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T15:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=4b4125fc834470d8a4d46be27b054ab2"},"modified":"2018-02-01T15:05:19","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T15:05:19","slug":"news-story-time-to-talk-about-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=88587","title":{"rendered":"News story: Time to Talk about mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Approximately 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem at some point in life.<\/p>\n

For an organisation as large as Sellafield Ltd, that means that around 4000 employees will encounter issues with their mental health.<\/p>\n

So, why is nobody talking about it?<\/p>\n

To mark \u2018Time to Talk\u2019 Day, Euan Hutton from Sellafield Ltd talked to employees about his experiences.<\/p>\n

Time to Talk vlog<\/a><\/p>\n

He said:<\/p>\n

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The culture of silence associated with discussing mental health makes these issues worse and opening up to a colleague or friend is often the first step to recovery.<\/p>\n

From now on, I am encouraging everyone to open up to talking about mental health. To managers and team leaders: create the environment for open conversation on this topic and reassure your team that they will not be judged for reaching out. To everyone in the organisation: look out for your team mates; step in if they don\u2019t seem themselves or if they are behaving differently and let them know you\u2019re there for them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d never ask anyone to do something I wouldn\u2019t do myself\u2026so here goes nothing.<\/p>\n

In the past I\u2019ve had issues with one of my kidneys which I\u2019ve had treatment for. It comes up in conversation sometimes, and I\u2019ve always been happy to talk about. I\u2019ve got a bit of arthritis in my ankle which I\u2019ve openly talked about, it\u2019s painful. It is as a result of breaking my ankle playing rugby when I was younger.<\/p>\n

These are health issues which aren\u2019t exactly public as such, but which I\u2019m certainly comfortable talking about openly.<\/p>\n

What I have struggled to talk about openly is that in 2012, not long before I came back to work at Sellafield, I had counselling to help me deal with stress and anxiety.<\/p>\n

I had the counselling because I was ill. It was medical treatment for an illness. Just like my kidney and my ankle.<\/p>\n

On the face of it I didn\u2019t have anything to be anxious about. I was doing okay at work, I\u2019m happily married and have three great kids and a loving family. I\u2019m not unique or special. But I was ill. I needed help and treatment, and I got it, and I got better.<\/p>\n

Mental health is the same as physical health. Any one of us can be affected at any time. We don\u2019t choose it, it chooses us.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we\u2019re encouraging people to talk in the workplace, and directing people to where more help is available.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On ‘Time to Talk’ day, Sellafield Ltd director, Euan Hutton, has talked to our employees about his experiences of mental health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}