Can ‘corporate wellness’ beat a mental health pandemic? This week's Radio Davos
Mental health has a huge personal and business cost. Image: Sydney Sims/Unsplash
- The COVID-19 pandemic has increased awareness of mental health.
- ‘Corporate wellness’ is worth tens of billions of dollars - but does any of it work?
- Wellcome Trust tells Radio Davos about research into efficacy of workplace mental health initiatives.
- And a survivor of the Rwandan genocide on why mental health is a universal issue.
Even before the pandemic, anxiety and depression were estimated to cost the global economy over $1 trillion every year in lost productivity.
So perhaps it should not surprise us to learn that ‘corporate wellness’ is a booming sector. Companies are lining up to offer employers silver bullets for dealing with mental health - and the industry is forecast to be worth $66 billion by 2022.
With that kind of money being spent, you might assume those spending it know what they are buying is effective. But the truth is, no one really knows. This week, the Wellcome Trust issued a call to companies to join them in analysing the effectiveness of workplace mental health initiatives. Read about it in this report: Putting science to work: Understanding what works for workplace mental health.
On this week's Radio Davos podcast, we hear from Wellcome's Professor Miranda Wolpert and mental health advocate Grace Gatera.
Useful links:
Wellcome’s mental health approach: https://wellcome.org/what-we-do/mental-health
LinkedIn blog on Wellcome's work on 'active ingredients' for youth anxiety and depression: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/26-ingredients-beat-youth-anxiety-depression-evidence-wolpert/
For more information about Wellcome’s work on workplace mental health, contact Rhea Newman via workplacementalhealth@wellcome.org.
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