Get that Weight off Your Mind

A little over a year ago, the British government appointed a minister for loneliness. It makes sense, considering that approximately nine million people in the UK are affected by loneliness, including about 200,000 older people who have gone for a month without having a conversation with a friend or family member, and up to 85% of young disabled adults feel lonely. In the US, a third of the adults over 45 years of age are categorized as lonely. Loneliness, as researchers have found, is as harmful to our health as alcoholism or smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Across the world, more than 350 million people of all ages and from all communities suffer from depression, according to the World Health Organization. Depression is also the largest cause of disability worldwide, and, together with anxiety, leads to a global economic loss of US$1 trillion per year. To many suffering depression, the illness is like being followed around by a black dog, who “sniffs out what confidence I had and chase it away at social occasions”, makes them think and say negative things, and who “loves nothing more than to wake me up with highly repetitive and negative thinking”.

The video “I had a black dog, his name was depression” was the collaborative work of the WHO, to mark World Mental Health Day in 2012, with writer and illustrator Matthew Johnstone. The idea for “I Had a Black Dog”, Johnstone’s first book, published in 2005, came after 9/11. With depression in and out of his life since his late 20s, Johnstone was warned that publishing the book could lead to loss of his job and friends. But nothing negative of that sort happened. “...apart from marrying my wife and having my children, this was one of the best things I’d ever done with my life. Not only did it set me free but I began to live my life authentically. The biggest lesson in all this for me was helping others is one of the greatest ways we can help ourselves,” said Johnstone. And help others, he did: the video has amassed nine million views to date.

Increasingly, entrepreneurs and business leaders, who have long been masking their vulnerability to manage impression, are beginning to speak up about their wrestles with depression and anxiety, as well as the stigma that comes with these mental illnesses that makes it hard for people to seek help. This is especially important in the US, where work has evolved from a means of material production to identity production, where “a culture that funnels its dreams of self-actualization into salaried jobs is setting itself up for collective anxiety, mass disappointment, and inevitable burnout”. Americans these days work about 50% more than the people in Germany, France or Italy, and they have even surpassed Japan, whose workaholic culture has its own macabre name, “karōshi”, literally “death from overwork”. Americans are working so hard that they seem to have forgotten that their ancestors once had to fight for time off from work. But if you’re really buying into the claim of four-day work week being less stressful and more productive, skepticism may be warranted.  

In Hong Kong, mental health costs employers in the professional services industry HK$5.5 to HK$12.4 billion a year, equating to around HK$ 1 million per organization per year on average, according to a recent joint research by CMHA HK, an FSI portfolio company, and Oliver Wyman Management Consultancy. Hong Kong is one of the cities with longest working hours,  with employees working for as many as 50.1 hours per week. Studies by CMHA HK have found that 57% of employees are subject to work-related stress, 75% of employees would still go to work even while experiencing mental health problems, probably because only 8% believe that their industry has adequate support to deal with mental health issues.

Great Minds

Entrepreneurship can sometimes be lonely and stressful, which is why FSI’s coworking space is open to social entrepreneurs to cowork with a community that strives for shared impact. Get in touch with us to learn more about “Peak Impact”.