Mental Health Awareness at Work: A Practical Guide for May and Beyond
Workplace mental health is not a perk. It is a business condition. And most organizations are still learning how to address it.
By Omar Rantisi, Founder of Therma
It’s Mental Health Awareness Month. Start your free 60-second check-in →
The workplace mental health problem
The World Health Organization estimates that depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1 trillion per year in lost productivity. The American Institute of Stress reports that 83% of US workers experience work-related stress, with 25% describing their job as the number one stressor in their lives. Mental Health Awareness Month in May provides organizations an opportunity to move from performative wellness gestures toward structural changes that actually address the root causes of workplace psychological distress.
“the most powerful thing a manager can do for team mental health is to make honesty safe. everything else is downstream of that.”
Signs workplace culture is affecting mental health
At the individual level: chronic Sunday dread, difficulty concentrating during tasks that used to feel manageable, emotional numbness toward work outcomes, or increased irritability with colleagues. At the organizational level: high turnover without clear cause, declining engagement scores, managers reporting that their team seems 'checked out,' or an increase in sick days around specific team cycles or deadlines. These signals often emerge months before formal HR issues.
What organizations and individuals can do in May
For organizations: replace one performative wellness event with a structural change, such as a no-meeting day, a protected lunch hour, or explicit permission from leadership to use mental health days without explanation. Train managers to ask 'how are you doing' and wait for a real answer rather than a social script response. For individuals: use Mental Health Awareness Month as a prompt to audit your work-to-recovery ratio. If you end most weeks more depleted than when you started, that is data, not a personal failing. Therma's check-in practice helps professionals distinguish between normal work stress and accumulating burnout by surfacing patterns across weeks, not just days.
Journal prompts to sit with
- 01What part of my work feels meaningful right now, and what part feels hollow?
- 02What would I do differently at work if I were not worried about how it looked?
- 03How has my relationship with work changed in the past year?
- 04When I am at my best professionally, what conditions made that possible?
- 05What boundary at work do I keep not setting, and what is the real cost of that?
Common questions
What is psychological safety at work and why does it matter?
Psychological safety is the belief that you will not be punished for speaking up, making mistakes, or expressing concerns. Google's Project Aristotle identified it as the single most important factor in high-performing teams. Organizations with high psychological safety show lower turnover and higher innovation rates.
How can employees protect their mental health at work?
Clear boundaries between work and rest, a daily decompression ritual at the end of the workday, and honest self-monitoring of stress accumulation are the most actionable individual strategies. Therma's end-of-day check-in creates a consistent transition ritual that separates work mode from personal time.
What should companies do for Mental Health Awareness Month?
Beyond campaigns and communications, effective interventions include manager mental health training, normalizing use of mental health benefits, and creating space for non-performative conversation. Offering tools like Therma as part of an employee wellness benefit gives individuals a private, low-friction way to build emotional awareness habits.
Related topics
Therma · Emotional Wellness
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