By limiting travel, leisure, social interactions, and sometimes modifying the work / personal life balance, the pandemic has affected the mental health of French women and men. For several months now, studies have been multiplying to warn of the psychological distress resulting from this year of uncertainty. According to an OpinionWay study from March 2021, the rate of psychological distress (45%) decreased by 5 points in March 2021 compared to December 2020 but the rate of depression requiring support among employees increased (36%) by 15 points.
Silenced in the private and professional spheres for decades, mental health has now taken center stage. Fanny Jacq, psychiatrist, director of mental health at Qare and co-creator of Mon Sherpa, answered questions from Maddyness on this recent awareness and its long-term impact on society.
Mental health has been a taboo subject in French society for years despite warnings from some doctors about the issue. burn out. Has the pandemic succeeded in “freeing” the voice and listening on this subject in companies?
Fanny Jacq : You always have to find positive points in complicated situations, and I think that the pandemic has helped to liberate the word on mental health, whether in society and in business. In France, we are not ahead on the subject. Mental illnesses are still often unrecognized, and we are afraid of them. People still link mental illnesses to serious illnesses. From this follows an assimilation to a feeling of shame, whereas in Latin American countries, being followed by a coach is a source of pride. In companies in France, there is really a culture around passion and performance.
“As illnesses were considered to be equivalent to weakness, frailty, a lack of willpower, having ‘psy’ symptoms corresponded to being reduced in one’s performance. “
With the pandemic, we started to talk about it in the general population, we finally understood that going to a shrink is not a shame, and it finally had an impact on business leaders and HRDs. We finally started talking about it in business from the perspective of yield, performance, results. I think that before, as illnesses were considered to be equivalent to weakness, frailty or even a lack of willpower, having “psy” symptoms corresponded to being reduced in one’s performance. It was like saying that the collaborator was weak if he was not well. The situation has turned around and we are beginning to understand that, on the contrary, we must do prevention in order to improve the performance of employees and the management of pressure on a daily basis.
With teleworking, the closure of schools, partial unemployment, all members of the company – employees, HRD, managers – have been affected. Has there been a growing awareness within companies which may have given rise to a feeling of responsibility?
F. J. : Indeed, it participated in the awareness. Psychological symptoms, burn out, sleep problems have been felt in everyone. Managers have had a lot of problems to manage with these new remote working methods, employee disengagement, difficulty balancing their private and professional life, managing employee suffering, isolation. Some of them found themselves in psychological distress as well, and it made them realize that it really wasn’t a weakness. Managers and human resources were the most exposed, because they were poor and little or not prepared. One figure confirms it: 60% of managers said they were stressed during our last study.
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Regarding corporate responsibility, this is a phenomenon that we have felt at Qare. In Canada, there are internal programs in all companies to assess the health of employees and help them. In France, this is not at all the case but we saw that during the year 2020, things started to accelerate on this subject. Today, 30 to 40% of employers in France are looking into setting up an employee assistance program. At Qare, we have received a lot of requests on these topics. This is why so many startups have embarked on this subject in recent months.
Does this awareness operate in the same way in all companies, and is there a “generation” effect?
F.J : There is a very strong cultural bias. In France, in the 1950s and 1960s, the psychoanalytic trend exploded and this gave a somewhat negative image of psychiatry, which was seen as a dusty specialty. And at the same time, in the 1960s, huge psychiatric hospitals were built in France, which helped to make this area something quite taboo.
This taboo is a generation story. In this sense, the evolution will surely depend on the form of the company. Traditional, family-owned companies, SMEs with a business owner over 60 and employees over 50 will find it more difficult to move forward on the subject. In startups and younger companies, which have a different form of corporate culture, this change might be more natural.
The taboo is gradually lifting, companies are setting up programs to support employees. Does this mean that we will be able to go see our manager tomorrow to talk to him about his discomfort, or should we favor anonymized solutions?
F.J : In companies with a younger culture, going to your manager to talk about it might be easier. But generally, when speaking with employees, we realize that most of them expect prevention solutions. They seek to avoid harassment or burn out. But if the diagnosis has already been made and the person feels bad, it will be difficult for them to talk about it. There are already only 20% of people who consult a shrink who talk to their relatives, so it is not their manager that they will naturally go to confide. The majority of the tools requested have this anonymization criterion. Employees are really worried about whether their boss will know that they have downloaded the app.
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The managers were caught off guard, they had to deal with these issues without preparation. How can we better prepare them for the future?
F.J : There is a real need to train managers to explain to them that it is not a weakness but a strength to realize that we need support and that everyone can be affected. It is also important to explain to them that there is a medical side to depression. When the serotonin level is low, it cannot rise on its own.
There are still employees who do not dare to discuss this issue with their manager because they are afraid of their reaction. If they know that he is trained in this issue, it may be easier for them to come to him to talk about it. I even advocate that certain managers, HRDs or key people receive training in first aid measures concerning psychological distress. If someone goes into cardiac arrest, you know what to do, but you don’t know how to react to someone who is suicidal if you don’t have the training. And if you detect it, what to do: do we notify the family? Do we talk to him about it directly?
“There is a risk of ‘result first’ looming with the recovery, a search for outperformance after two years of reduced growth and lost sales. “
The pandemic has accelerated awareness, but does that mean the taboo has been lifted entirely?
F.J : Indeed, it is a bit early to decide. We will have to wait for the end of this crisis and the return of employees to a more traditional way of working to be able to say that this taboo has really been thrown out of the company. The repercussions of Covid-19 will last much longer than the crisis itself. We already know that affected patients have a risk of depression in the months that follow. Today, the subject still benefits from media pressure, pressure between employers too – there is an influence of officials between them – not to mention the Minister of Solidarity and Health Olivier Véran who also spoke about it. . But we must be careful and wait until 2022 to find out whether companies will renew contracts with companies on this subject.
There is a risk of “results first” which looms with the recovery, a search for outperformance after two years of reduced growth and loss of turnover. Hopefully the trial will transform and these tools will be adopted by businesses. When we do prevention, it costs less than a work stoppage and this method increases performance in a good sense.
This article is part ofa file devoted to mental health. Psychological distress, chief happiness officer and innovative solutions: Maddyness takes stock of a subject that has long been taboo within companies, but which has resurfaced with the pandemic, confinements and compulsory teleworking.
Previous articles in the series:
- Mental health: the boom in solutions to take care of employees
- 7 startups that take care of the mental health of employees
- Chief happiness officer, a mocked profession that continues to be sought
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