Lockdown is hard. And sometimes we need to just acknowledge that and that we don’t feel ok: it’s perfectly normal and it most certainly isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s not just lockdown of course though: at some point in our lives 1 in 5 New Zealanders will experience mental illness, and 1 in 7 depression half of which will come before we’re even 25 years old. If 1 in 5 of our team or friends were having any other type of health issue, we’d jump on it straight away, so let’s do the same here.
Here at Safe Food Pro we pride ourselves on being the leading Health and Safety App in
NZ, and so we’re starting a series where we’re going to talk Mental Health not just Physical
Health. Why? Because it affects just about every single one of us directly or indirectly and
because looking after ourselves and our teams is bloody important right now. And we know it’s hard in the industry at the moment with almost everyone shut down, not sure exactly when we’ll be able to get back to work.
You’ve probably been through everything from a practical perspective in your business by now, but how about that most important of assets, you and your people? Not just now of course, but when we do start getting back to work the pressures will be higher than normal in many ways and we’ll need to make sure we’re checking in on ourselves and others more than normal too.
We’ll be chatting with a range of professionals from your industry and ours as well as Robert Dunne who runs the amazing Movember program in NZ, a high performance sports psychologist who is just back from Tokyo with our most successful ever Olympic team, and others to come.
To get us started we’ve spoken to the fantastic Bridget Jelley who some of you may already know from her work with The Effect. If you don’t, Bridget describes herself as “not one of those psychologists who has a couch and you lie down and talk about your problems”!
With extensive qualifications as a Psychologist, combined with a background in business, it’s no surprise that our conversation with her covered a lot of ground. You can watch the whole chat if you like, but you’re probably juggling lockdown and whanau so we’ve cut it into some little bites which we thought would be easiest. Bridget focused on real practical tips and advice on things like:
- How to look after yourself as a leader, business owner or team leader. If you’re not feeling good how are you going to look after others?
- How to look after your team when you’re trying to manage all the other parts of your business.
- The signs that someone needs help.
- A well-being hack people can use.
There are some great resources available for free from The Effect online specifically for Covid-19 help, so contact Bridget directly at team@theeffect.co.nz and let her know you’re a friend of Safe Food Pro.
And lastly, if you’re worried about yourself or someone else, please don’t do it alone. We have a wide range of services in NZ who are there to talk to you any time you need to.
- Need to talk? (1737 – free call or text)
- The Depression Helpline (0800 111 757)
- Healthline (0800 611 116)
- Lifeline (0800 543 354)
- Samaritans (0800 726 666)
- Youthline (0800 376 633)
- Alcohol Drug Helpline (0800 787 797)
- What's Up? - Helpline for children and young people (0800 942 8787)
We hope you enjoy this and find it as useful as we did. We’d love to hear what you thought of it, and if you have any questions at all about mental health that you’d like us to cover, please reach out too.
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