MIND MOVES:Being made redundant hurts but there are ways of easing the mental stress it causes, writes TONY BATES.
IT DOESN’T seem that long ago that we exchanged house values with one another over cocktails and purred with pride that we had somehow or other made it into the millionaire club. Nowadays we are almost fearful of asking close friends if they still have a job.
Unemployment is all around us. It’s hurting a lot of families. The issue of how it affects our mental health, our relationships with loved ones and with our communities seems to be on everyone’s mind.
It’s easy to underestimate the importance that roles and routines play in giving our lives a certain shape and structure. They anchor our identities, give our lives focus and purpose and make our world seem secure and predictable.
When these familiar supports are taken way, our sense of who we are loses its anchorage and everything gets turned upside down. When a person loses their job, he or she can lose a sense of who they are and feel like they no longer belong anywhere.
The National Office of Suicide Prevention (NOSP) has responded to our current rise in unemployment by producing a simple straightforward pamphlet called Look after your mental health in tough economic timesand a more elaborate booklet for organisations, titled Suicide Prevention in the Workplace.
Susan Kenny, the author, explained that the reason was to make people aware of looking after their mental health just as they might look after their physical health. They contain information on how to recognise signs of stress, practical steps for dealing with stress, and how to respond appropriately to someone who may feel suicidal.
The launch of these two very practical aids was used as a forum to explore the psychological impact of unemployment and to look particularly at whether it increased the risk of suicide.
Dr Justin Brophy, consultant psychiatrist, cautioned us to be slow to assume a direct link between unemployment and suicide. If there is one, it’s a lot more complex than we might assume.
Unemployment clearly places a person at risk for a range of mental health difficulties, including anxiety, sleep disturbance and increased conflict with loved ones. But his presentation highlighted the protective factors in our lives that offset some of the negative impacts of unemployment.
Dr Brophy framed the risks to mental health as primarily social rather than medical. He redirected our discourse on suicide to protective rather than risk factors and urged us to think about ways in which we can rediscover “what it was to be Irish”; to build and nurture social bonds that are key to health and wellbeing.
His advice to the unemployed was practical: keep active, watch your alcohol intake, put some structure into your day and in so far as you can, keep alive any interests and activities that you enjoy, particularly those that connect you with others.
He didn’t minimise the pain of being made redundant – it can let loose many dark forces that can be destructive to family life – but neither did he exaggerate its negative consequences or make them sound inevitable. He urged the media to be measured in reporting the challenges faced by those who are unemployed, as there is a real danger of conveying helplessness and despair to people who badly need to feel hope.
Prof Richard Price, from Michigan, US, was the other speaker who presented an intriguing programme to build confidence and job search skills among the unemployed.
Essentially a resilience building experience, it teaches people how to best present themselves to prospective employers and how not to be demoralised by rejection, which will inevitably occur in the process of looking for a job.
Price’s programme is delivered in groups where participants learn as much from each other as from the instructors.
It focuses on reinforcing the skills that people already have, skills they may well not be aware of; it prepares them for disappointment and emphasises the need to always have a “plan B”.
This was a very constructive initiative on the part of the NOSP and it is to be commended for it. What struck me from each of the contributions was that the key to dealing with unemployment is to preserve and strengthen your sense of who you are.
In the face of all the many consequences of losing a job, a person can easily lose their sense of self.
Recently, I had the experience of teaching an introductory course on mindfulness with Sr Stan Kennedy to people who were unemployed. This course gave people an opportunity to be part of a learning process with others who were facing many of the same challenges they were facing.
A tremendous sense of solidarity developed among them. The practice of mindfulness also gave them a way to face what was happening in their lives and to connect with their own inner strength and resilience.
I have no doubt that there are hundreds of groups around this country that offer people different ways to feel included, to feel like they are somebody. If ever there was a time to mobilise these natural community supports, it is now.
Tony Bates is founder director of Headstrong – The National Centre for Youth Mental Health (www.headstrong.ie)
Materials produced by the National Office of Suicide Prevention are available through the HSE website www.healthpromotion.ie or phone 1850241850