Why are we even doing this?
Or, happy mental health awareness month.
May is here and it’s officially Mental Health Awareness month, a time when people across the country will be talking about the importance of addressing our mental health!
As I’ve been building Mind the Movement, one of the things that has surprised me the most is how unwilling people in my own industry: politics and campaigns are to talk about mental health, burnout or workplace stress. I know that so much of what we all love about working on high stakes, high intensity, short term campaigns IS the fact that it’s stressful. We trauma bond with our colleagues, we go out and drink too much and say what we’re really thinking. And we have stories to tell for a lifetime.
No matter how hard I work to bring mental health support to campaigns (and movement and civil service work) that sense of underlying stress isn’t going to go away. And honestly? I don’t know if I’d want it to, because I love it too! Most of my closest friends are people I met through various campaigns going back to 2007.
But that’s not what Mind the Movement is here to address.
What we want to tackle is the culture where people who come in with anxiety, depression or other mental health challenges are left totally unsupported at work and after the campaign ends.
Where speaking up about verbal abuse, sexual harassment, substance use in the office or even physical assault no longer leads to the person who raised the alarm being scapegoated or even publicly shamed.
We want to create systems and infrastructure so that when campaigns end staff have the support and resources they need to stay well enough to live…and to stay in this work.
We want to shift the culture that rewards bad behavior and horrible management in the service of hitting massive numeric goals, towards one where we invest in the people doing the work.
If campaigns want to win, they need to take care of the staff who will be working with volunteers, who will be the people talking to voters. If we want to get back to true long-term organizing and not just mass mobilization for a few weeks at the end of the election, we need staff with depth of knowledge, who are emotionally intelligent, able to self-regulate and who are guided by healthy leaders.
All of these changes will take a lot more than peer support groups, crisis training and free therapy, but we hope to play a small part in creating this shift.
At Mind the Movement we believe it’s always worth it in the long run to speak up. That’s why today we’re launching the Unmute Yourself campaign to start the mental health conversation at work.
When we say “unmute” here’s what we mean:
Understanding how mental health and wellbeing impacts employees and their work.
Noticing changes in behavior and performance as indicators of burnout.
Modeling transparency around your own mental health.
Utilizing resources to support employee wellbeing.
Training to spot and address early indicators of distress or crisis.
Enabling the team to speak up about mental health concerns.
We created two short guides to give you the tools to start broaching the topic of mental health and well-being at work. You can grab them here:
Unmute Yourself guide for Managers & Leaders
If you’re running an organization and want to team up with us to drive this conversation forward, let’s connect! We have a handy toolkit with resources you can use.
Happy Mental Health Awareness Month!!
All my best,
Ashley
Mind the Movement Founder & Executive Director