Stephen Crocker, the CEO of Norwich Theatre, marks today's World Mental Health Day by urging us to talk about our own mental health to help and reduce stigma The theme for this year is mental health at work and the importance of addressing mental health and wellbeing in the workplace for the benefit of people, organisations, and communities. Around 1 in 6 of us experience mental health problems at work. What is even more staggering is that 63% of respondents to Deloitte's mental health research were experiencing at least one characteristic of burnout.
For most of us, work is a vital part of our daily lives, and if this part of our lives is out of balance, it can seep into every other aspect of our lives, no matter how much we try not to let it. It is perhaps inevitable that we will all experience challenges and stresses at work and have to carry on. However, it is clear, at least to me, that as a society we need to better acknowledge this in a way that normalises proactive mental health management in a similar way to proactive physical health management.
A few weeks ago I found myself like this on a Friday morning at Theatre Royal. It was 8.30am and I’d only got off the train from London at 2am that morning and it had been a long week.
As I went to get myself the first of many coffees that day in Café Royal I chose to walk back to my office at a slow pace through the Theatre Royal auditorium. It was in semi-darkness, no-one was around and the stage empty but theatres alwa.