Mental Health Month

As humans, our overall health is significantly affected by our natural and built environment: where we are born, live, learn, work, play, and congregate all influence our health. While we often think of these environmental factors (sometimes called the “social determinants of health,” or the “vital conditions for well-being”) as relating largely to our physical health, it’s important to consider the effect of our environment on our mental health and well-being as well.

Look Around, Look Within as we consider every part of our environment and its effect on our mental health and well-being. Some aspects of our environments may be outside of our immediate control while in other areas we have the potential to make change.

We all have mental health, and we all have unique environments. Making our environments as healthy as possible goes a long way in improving our mental well-being. We all benefit from stable environments, strong communities, and ready access to needed services.

Please take time to utilize the tools, resources, and programming provided to find ways to adapt your surroundings to improve overall health and well-being, as well as ways to cope when change seems out of reach.

Look Around, Look Within

To provide a safe and welcoming environment for employees who live with mental illnesses, employers should consider:

Providing mental health training for managers to develop supportive and emotionally intelligent people managers
Promoting positive workplace mental health from the top down
Encouraging managers and supervisors to check in with employees and encourage time off, as needed.
Assisting employees with workload management and guidance
Notice signs of employee stress or burnout

Tips for Employers on how to support employees.

For more information on how to provide a safe and welcoming environment for employees who live with mental illness, please visit MHA’s website at www.mhanational.org/workplace or review the following articles:

What is emotional intelligence and how does it apply to the workplace?
What additional resource supports can we offer?

Information on this page is referenced from Mental Health America (MHA): Mind the Workplace Health Survey 2022.

Human Resources

PROSPECTIVE EMPLOYEES

WORKING AT UCONN

BENEFITS BEYOND PAY

BENEFITS VIDEOS

EMPLOYEE VIDEOS

NEW & CURRENT EMPLOYEES

Benefits

Leaves of Absence

Employee Support

Onboarding & Offboarding

MANAGERS & SUPERVISORS

Recruiting & Hiring

Job Performance

Policies & Resources

Employee Relations

Having a Healthy Home Environment

Neighborhoods and Towns

The Outdoors and Nature

Safe and Stable Housing

WORKSHEET: Shaping Your Home Environment

WORKSHEET: Opening Your Mind to the Outdoors

Additional Resources

Adapting After Trauma and Stress

Processing Big Changes

Getting Out of Thinking Traps

Practicing Radical Acceptance

Taking Time for Yourself/Self-Care

Dealing with Anger and Frustration

Safe and Welcoming Work Environments

National Alliance on Mental Illness

Strength Over Silence

Webinars

Additional Helpful Sites/Resources