2022 Calls for Renewed Focus on Mental Health

January is the month of resolutions, goal-setting, gym incentives, and discount diets. It’s traditionally when we take a hard look at ourselves, bemoan holiday indulgences, and promise ourselves a fresh start. While I admire the people who launch intense exercise programs or cut all refined carbs from their diet, this year I’ve resolved mental health is the focus of my new beginning.

As I write, we’re a week into the new year. My whole family is still sniffling from Christmas COVID, and I’m on my first work trip of 2022. I’m happy to be connecting in person six feet away from clients, and I’m breathing a huge sigh of relief that no federal institutions have been attacked as of this moment.

Given the last two years, I know better than to relax into even this bizarre sense of normalcy—where none of my loved ones are hospitalized, I feel naked without a mask, and the National Guard is not mobilizing to combat rioters. That’s because I know it can change in a split-second.

I won’t call any of this “normal,” a term that has always been relative. But when I consider the height of the bar now set at my acceptable level of abnormal, my head spins. Two years ago, I never would’ve imagined a world where a rapidly mutating disease could hijack our global economy, supply chains, social norms, and families.

I applaud our resilience and adaptability, but this weighs heavily on us all.

I don’t even know how the mental health effects of 2020-2021 can be most accurately measured. I know that record numbers of Americans are quitting their jobs—4.5 million last November alone, surpassing the previous record of 4.4 million in September. In June 2020, the CDC released a report that found 40 percent of the adults they surveyed were struggling with mental health and substance abuse. A study in The Lancet found an estimated 76 million more cases of anxiety and 53 million more cases of depression on a global scale during the pandemic.

I’ve suffered along with members of my own family and professional community as we wrestle with the terms of this new world we live in. It’s sensitized me to the mental health challenges we’re all grappling with. As a business owner, a mother, a friend, and a human, I want us all to be OK.

That’s why we’ve instituted checks and measures to foment deeper connections between coworkers, managers, and clients at Empirical Technologies Corp. I’m not bringing in teams of therapists, mandatory programs, or any complicated processes. I pick up the phone and reach out to employees to hear from their live voice if they’re OK. I know this is more manageable in small businesses than large ones, but the concept is universal: when people feel like you care about them, it brings some level of healing.

It also engages that other voice in the solution. As I reached out to various team members, I asked about ways we could connect. The idea of a company yoga practice kept coming up, so that’s how our weekly Monday yoga class got started. An instructor comes to our building at the end of the day to lead whatever kind of practice our yogis request. Sometimes it’s a muscle-building series that leaves us sweaty. Other days we just stretch out in corpse pose and meditate. It’s an hour a week, well worth the 50 dollars I pay in order to give my team a chance to unwind from work and life.

We also encourage anyone who can step away from the lab or their computer to join us at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. for the three laps around the parking lot that give us a mile’s worth of steps. We know how hard our employees work, and we know how important it is to take a break from that work. Plus, the combination of movement and fresh air seems to spark new ideas and get people talking across teams.

Over the past year, I have made a point to talk about mental health during team meetings. My goal is to destigmatize the term and the need for help. I’ve never understood why we accept coaches for sports, doctors for physical injuries, and guidance from spiritual leaders, but the resistance to asking for mental health support seems to be part of the fabric of our society. I’m trying to initiate dialog that may prompt someone to reach out. I want my employees to know their well-being matters to me, that I struggle myself, and that our benefits provide professional resources.

I encourage my colleagues to look out for each other. I’m thankful when they come to me to share their concerns about coworkers they notice withdrawing and isolating. I know I’m not a therapist, but I also know I can pull someone aside and ask, “Hey, do you have someone to talk to?” I can show them I care, and I can connect them with someone who can help.

Safeguarding the mental health of the people who power my companies isn’t just being a good human; it’s good business. My team is the foundation of my professional success. They are my internal customers, the people who have to believe in what we’re doing so the external customers receive the care, attention, and service they pay for. If one person is suffering, the whole team feels it. So, I’m reaching out, I’m asking questions, and I’m listening for how I can show them they matter—that we are all in this together. 

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Dawn Lissy is a biomedical engineer, entrepreneur, and innovator. Since 1998, Empirical Technologies Corp. has operated under Lissy’s direction. Empirical offers the full range of regulatory and quality systems consulting, testing, small batch and prototype manufacturing, and validations services to bring a medical device to market. Empirical is very active within standards development organization ASTM International and has one of the widest scopes of test methods of any accredited independent lab in the United States. Because Lissy was a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, she has first-hand, in-depth knowledge of the regulatory landscape. Lissy holds an inventor patent for the Stackable Cage System for corpectomy and vertebrectomy. Her M.S. in biomedical engineering is from The University of Akron, Ohio.