First appeared on Forbes.com.
In a recent New York Times article, Ann Carrins posited the need for a regular mental health checkup citing the growing number of resources available for people to ‘self-check’ their symptoms for depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, amongst other issues. This is undoubtedly good news for business, as most functioning employed people don’t go near the subject of mental health, don’t touch their benefits, and probably feel that taking care of depression or anxiety by going to therapy is a slippery slope: sooner or later (or immediately) the therapist is going to find something, and then how to do you get out? Oddly there was no mention of stress in the article, despite the fact that stress costs US businesses $300 billion annually in productivity, lost time and employee conflict.
Dr. Andrew Shatte, world renowned psychologist in the field of cognitive behavior therapy and resilience training and a colleague of mine, said: “In the mental health field, we currently have diagnoses for anxiety and depression but not for the stress. But that doesn’t make the issue of stress any less powerful or dangerous.”
