Last October 10th was the Day of Mental Health and tons of information was raised everywhere. It’s no doubt that it is a trending topic nowadays. Some of the information that caught my attention the most were:

• 20% of children and teenagers suffer from mental disorders
• 23% of lost years due to incapacity are due to mental disorders
• 900.000 of suicides happen every year around the world with an age range between 15 and 44 years old.
• Mental disorders increase the risk of suffering other illness
• People with mental disorders are stigmatized and discriminated
• In most countries are claims of human rights violations against people with a mental or psychological disorder.
• 25% of people in the world suffer or will suffer some kind of mental disorder during their life.
• Less than 25% of people with a mental or psychological disorder are diagnosed and receive adequate treatment.
• The number of psychologists and psychiatrists is very low, less than 70 per 100.000 people in rich countries.
• 50% of the disorders start before 14 years old
• 280 million people suffer depression in the world, 3,8% of the population in the world.

These figures are very impressive and they put the existence of a real problem in our society over the table.

One of the places where people spend the most time in their lives is at work, so companies and employees should start thinking more about it as a real problem, as part of our day-to-day. As we can see in the figures no one is free to suffer this problem, which can stigmatize you and have a cruel end like suicide.

The first and more basic aspect to work in companies is to preserve the psychological safety of the environment because it can impact your employees directly and at the same time your accomplishments as a company.

But do you know how it could impact you on this lack of safety?

• You will start to inhibit yourself and stop proactive and enriching habits like giving opinions, sharing concerns, asking doubts, or telling ideas due to avoid interpersonal risks or feeling like a dumb or a bad person.
• You will stop innovating and assuming calculated risks due to the fear of conflicts. Additionally, fear feeds fraud and hides the truth, so you probably won’t make your mistakes visible for not being reprimed in public.
• Your self-confidence will start to fall down dramatically because you can feel that nothing that you do is correct. This lack of self-confidence will start with a decrease in your energy and start affecting other aspects of your life.
• You will start being in the mouth of teammates regarding your lack of commitment or proactivity or interest, which will increase your negative feeling about yourself.
• All these aspects could start converting into a deeper problem, like not enjoying things that you love before, feeling sad, and ending up like a snowball in a never-ending negative cycle that makes you depressed.

Those are some of the things that could happen to you in a lack of psychological safety environment.

My recommendation if you are in this environment is to run away before starts impacting your mental health, nothing is more important than that. And one of the more important things, be assertive and establish limits in your personal relationships, and don’t refuse your wellness.