How to talk about mental health at work (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
Hello, Frances.

[00:00:07] Frances Frei:
Hi, beautiful.

[00:00:08] Anne Morriss:
So, this is a show about work, but, of course, what happens outside of work can have a huge impact on our performance.

[00:00:18] Frances Frei:
Or, as I like to say, if it weren't for the pesky humans.

[00:00:20] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yes. Today we're talking about mental health…

[00:00:25] Frances Frei:
Oh, good.

[00:00:25] Anne Morriss:
…which is this big, complicated, messy, question on one hand, but it's also quite simple, which is that, uh, in order to have the capability and license and motivation as we've talked about, to do a great job, your employees have to be in a mentally healthy place.

And, so it's in our interests as organizations, to not only care about this issue, but also be proactive about setting our employees up to thrive mentally, emotionally, psychologically.

[00:01:01] Frances Frei:
Uh, this is gonna be so important. As, as you know, I have gotten back into physical shape recently. Took a decade off. Um, and I get a lot of positive affirmation in the world.

You look great! Um, I have also gone through periods of that mental freshening, uh, but that's so much more invisible and if I have to look back, a bigger obstacle.

[00:01:25] Anne Morriss:
I feel like that experience makes you, like, I'm just gonna round up the numbers a little bit, everyone else, uh, when it comes to having gone through periods of struggling mentally in some way. And, so I'm really excited to get into this conversation today and start, just start to chip away at it.

[00:01:48] Frances Frei:
Let's go.

[00:01:50] Anne Morriss:
I'm Anne Morriss. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

[00:01:54] Frances Frei:
And, I'm Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School and I'm Anne's wife.

[00:01:59] Anne Morriss:
And, this is Fixable from the Ted Audio Collective. On this show, we believe that meaningful change happens fast. Anything is fixable and good solutions are usually just a single brave conversation away.

[00:02:11] Frances Frei:
Who do we have today, Anne?

[00:02:12] Anne Morriss:
Well, Frances. Today we are hosting another master Fixer on the show. It's actually one of your colleagues at Harvard Business School, Professor Lauren Cohen.

[00:02:21] Frances Frei:
Oh, I adore Lauren Cohen. Not only is he the best in the world in his field, which is behavioral finance, how people behave, but I recall him being interviewed once and was asked, “If you weren't a professor, what would you be?” And his response was, “A nanny.”

[00:02:39] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah. I find him to be this really interesting, incredible messenger. He really followed the data from his original field, behavioral finance, honestly, to the issues that are really driving performance inside firms and mental health is a huge variable.

[00:03:05] Frances Frei:
We're often asked in academia, well, what does, does it tie to performance? This one has a bullseye.

[00:03:13] Anne Morriss:
All right, let's get into it.

Lauren Cohen, welcome to Fixable.

[00:05:13] Lauren Cohen:
Thank you so much for having me.

[00:05:15] Anne Morriss:
So, before we get started, uh, have you broken any powerlifting records recently? Just so we're up to speed on your achievements.

[00:05:24] Lauren Cohen:
You've done your research! No, no, no. So, not recently. Yeah, it's been a good 12 months, but gosh, I feel like one is in the works, you know, so that, it's been a little bit too long. So, training has been going well. I definitely squatted today. And, I'll ask the same of you.

[00:05:40] Frances Frei:
First of all, you're the first person to ever ask me that, ever.

[00:05:42] Lauren Cohen:
Okay.

[00:05:43] Frances Frei:
Second, hilarious. All right. Now let me ask now.

[00:05:47] Lauren Cohen:
Yes.

[00:05:48] Frances Frei:
What time of day do you work out?

[00:05:50] Lauren Cohen:
It's the morning. So, I wake up at four every morning. And, I work out then because I also have a, a ton of kids and so my wife and I get to work out together. It's like the one time that we get to just kind of breathe a few times before the little ones come rushing down.

[00:06:09] Frances Frei:
So, uh, two things. One, I'm the youngest of six.

[00:06:11] Lauren Cohen:
Uh huh, very nice.

[00:06:12] Frances Frei:
Uh. Uh, two, my wife wakes up at four, but that's when she does her best work. So, she wakes up at four and writes.

[00:06:20] Lauren Cohen:
Yes, Dan Ariely has this idea, which I think is right, um, that everyone has a power period, which is three hours every day where you can be super productive and, like, forget about that, you know, these investment banking stories of, oh gosh, we work 120 hour weeks. Like, nobody can be productive for 120 hours a week. And, so he says, look, you got three hours. So, find those three hours, bunch, all of your super important stuff there, and all the other hours, just like, answer emails, do administrative things, and everything else. And, so, kind of, save it up and find those.

[00:06:46] Anne Morriss:
Well, Lauren, I think we're gonna, we're gonna bring this all together by the end of this conversation. Powerlifting, power hours, mental health.

[00:06:54] Lauren Cohen:
I know. I like it.

[00:06:55] Anne Morriss:
It's all coming together.

[00:06:56] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:06:56] Lauren Cohen:
I like it. I like it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:58] Anne Morriss:
So, our focus today is mental health and wellness…

[00:07:05] Lauren Cohen:
Yeah.

[00:07:06] Anne Morriss:
… in organizations and I, I wanna start by just defining these terms because I, I, I feel like they're used a little loosely out in the world, but are these the terms you use in your own work?

[00:07:19] Lauren Cohen:
Yes. Uh, and so this is a great point. So, mental health, in much the same way that, like, physical health, if you ask someone, “Gosh, how are you feeling?” Physically healthy or not, then you can get lots of different answers. And, in fact, for the same ailment, you can get different answers, right? Someone might have, like, a slight ankle strain or something else. I'll be like, “Oh, it's terrible. It hurts when I walk up the stairs,” and someone else with the same ankle strain, you'll be like, “Yep, everything's fine.” and, kind of, not let you know about that.

So, mental health is kind of the same, right? In the sense that it's a continuum. We now are able to diagnose more of these mental health disorders, but even those disorders, they happen on a spectrum.

[00:07:59] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:07:59] Lauren Cohen:
Right? And, they have to do a lot with, uh, symptoms and symptoms reported by the individuals that have them. And, so in that sense, how many of these exist and how they exist is gonna be super, uh, differentiated across people.

[00:08:12] Anne Morriss:
So, the, the ra, just to establish the range of this conversation, i…, is it everything from going back to work after dealing with the loss of a loved one to conditions with diagnostic codes?

[00:08:27] Lauren Cohen:
Yes, actually, that the one that you just mentioned is gonna be a, a roughly, like, the third most prevalent mental health disorder will, in, in that bucket and that's a post-traumatic stress disorder. And, so that class of disorders will include things after a traumatic life event or a series of events. When we think about some of the other big ones that you, that you, kind of, have in mind, actually the largest of all the mental health disorders that are diagnosed worldwide are anxiety disorders, are classes of anxiety disorders. And, the second are depression and depressive symptom disorders. And, so because those three are kind of the largest by a fair margin, those are the three where there's the most research on.

[00:09:12] Frances Frei:
Great.

[00:09:12] Lauren Cohen:
Right? And, and so with those three in mind, I could just tell you about 10.7% of the world's population, this is by the most recent WHO numbers, had some kind of mental health disorder during their lifetime, and, so that's about 800 million people.

[00:09:26] Frances Frei:
Wow.

[00:09:26] Lauren Cohen:
And, anxiety disorders are gonna be about 280 million out of that 800 million. So, they're the largest group of those. And, then in terms of US data, we have good US data as well. And, so here it's gonna be roughly about one in five US adults has, uh, a mental health episode each year. Okay. So it's much larger.

[00:09:44] Frances Frei:
Wow.

[00:09:45] Lauren Cohen:
And, and, and roughly 31% of adults, so this is one in three, have a mental health issue or disorder at some point in their life.

[00:09:53] Anne Morriss:
Right. And, so do you mean experiencing one of those three categories? So, a traumatic event, anxiety and depression, and then the longer tail of conditions. One in three of us will experience some part of those categories at some point in our lives.

[00:10:11] Lauren Cohen:
Exactly. And those episodes, you know, like we mentioned, those episodes, that can mean something very different. Right?

[00:10:15] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:10:16] Lauren Cohen:
So, like you could have an anxiety disorder episode that for you is only a week, let's say, and for me it can be six months.

[00:10:23] Anne Morriss:
Right. So, Lauren, your core academic expertise is behavioral finance.

[00:10:30] Lauren Cohen:
Yes.

[00:10:31] Anne Morriss:
So, how, how did you find yourself getting interested in, in mental health?

[00:10:36] Lauren Cohen:
I'll tell you where it comes from. Kind of a field within behavioral finance that I really focused on is, kind of, firm value. And, I think about, kind of, what adds value to firms and what takes away value from firms. And, what we've been seeing, kind of, throughout the past 40 years is that labor has become, uh, a much larger percentage of firm value in general, right?

So, in the 1970 firm, it turns out, I could tell you the value of Ford. It's that plant, plus that plant, plus that plant. So, it’s this many machines and like that's the value of Ford and our accounting systems reflected that, right? But, today, those aren't the value of firms, right? People are taking much more of that center stage. And, so that really got me into this area of thinking, gosh, what makes people able to show their best values at work, right? Express that the best that they can be in the workplace.
[00:11:32] Anne Morriss:
You, literally, you're human resources, and if you're human…

[00:11:35] Frances Frei:
Finally!

[00:11:35] Anne Morriss:
…resources…

[00:11:36] Frances Frei:
Finally! Human resources.

[00:11:37] Anne Morriss:
…. are struggling.

[00:11:37] Lauren Cohen:
Yeah.

[00:11:38] Anne Morriss:
Uh, then that's not great news for the business.

[00:11:42] Lauren Cohen:
Yes. Yeah, that's, uh, that's it a hundred percent. When an employee walks into work, it turns out they're not a totally different person than when they took their last step from outside of work. So, they're, they're impacted by everything that happened before they got there.

Like, when we say it, it seems bananas, right? It just doesn't make any sense. And, it turns out we have actually good empirical, now, and experimental evidence from psychology on this. It turns out, people are incredibly good about understanding that about themselves and, yet, terrible at understanding that about others.

[00:12:10] Anne Morriss:
That tracks.

[00:12:11] Lauren Cohen:
If I were to say, “Okay, what is Anne feeling right now?” And, I see the look on her face and I see, kind of, how she's looking down and maybe she doesn't say hi when I go by or when I'm going to the printer, then I think, ah, she must be mad at me. You know, I'm 80% sure because the last four days she said, “Hi,” but, today she didn't.

It turns out that our accuracy there is quite low because the reason that Anne didn't say hi today is that maybe she has a parent who's sick and that's on her mind. And, so we have a really terrible ability doing that, and, yet, we think we're very good at it.

[00:12:45] Anne Morriss:
Literature shows that we are, we are overconfident in our ability to predict what's happening inside the head of somebody else.

[00:12:54] Lauren Cohen:
Inside of someone else. And, so the reason this is so important is because when these issues are going on at work, you can't just rely on that ability to look and see that this is going on.

[00:13:05] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:13:06] Lauren Cohen:
Because we're not good at that as humans, even though we think we're good.

[00:13:09] Anne Morriss:
I'm curious, when you're working with leaders and trying to get their attention on this issue, what, what's the framing that works best? Like, how, how have you been successful in getting people to pay attention to this issue?

[00:13:24] Lauren Cohen:
Yes. Look, this is the, the framing that really has people lean in. If you think that impaired human capital is worth the same as an environment where they can be their best, you are crazy in a research proven way. When you can make those environments or have employees that don't have these types of issues, they create more value. So, if you think, gosh, this is something that might affect employees at certain levels, but it certainly doesn't affect the top, it turns out it affects the top in huge ways.

So, there was a study run that looked at CEOs. So, what they found is that when CEOs pass away, when a CEO dies, it turns out that's not a great thing for a firm. So, firm value goes down, profitability goes down, revenue goes down, and think about these, you know, super dynamic CEOs, like a Steve Jobs or someone along these lines. And, so we can kind of see how the value might go down, but it turns out what's even more value detracting for a firm is when a CEO has a loved one who passed away.

Because when a CEO passes away, then a new CEO can come in that can purely focus still on being a CEO. When you have a CEO who has a close member of their family that passes away, then you have a distracted CEO. Then, you have the CEO that can't bring their full selves to the job. And, so it's shown empirically that this is statistically and economically significant. So, these are big numbers. These things like 15% drop in ROA, 15% drop in profitability.

[00:15:00] Frances Frei:
Wow.

[00:15:00] Lauren Cohen:
And so I …

[00:15:01] Anne Morriss:
Wow.

[00:15:02] Lauren Cohen:
… think this is really powerful evidence of just what it does to an organization when you have your employees that have something that's pulling them away from work. Right? On that mental side.

[00:15:11] Anne Morriss:
So, what gets in the way of organizations spending time and money on these issues?

[00:15:16] Lauren Cohen:
Look, there are stigmas to mental health. So, here's the worst thing firms can do. Okay. When firms say, oh, we don't have mental health issues in our firm because we have Mental Health Day, or Mental Health Week, or, I've told all the employees that they can come talk to me whenever they want, and my door is always open, and, so, there are no issues.

Right? So, denying that these things exist, that's crazy because they are large embedded social stigmas to this. And, I wanna just list out what those, what, what the largest ones are. So, the first is that this mental health issue that an employee might have or be bringing up, that is just an excuse, right? They say, “Oh, you know, I'm really going through a tough time. I'm depressed, right? Or, I have this anxiety disorder. I'm really anxious around other people.” They say, “Ah, that's just an excuse.”

Um, the second stigma that comes up is that having that kind of employee, if I'm a manager, is a burden to our business. So, I say, “Gosh, if I have this member in my division and Anne doesn't have this kind of employee in their division, then her division's gonna do better than mine. And, then I'm worried that I'm not gonna be promoted as a manager and it's really just cost to our business.”

Um, the third is that it's associated with some kind of weakness. If you mention that you have a mental health disorder, then quickly you're stigmatized, you're ostracized, really.

The fourth is that there's some, kind of, self fault involved that gosh, somehow, you know, Lauren got himself into this issue. Now he's bringing it into work. It's not our problem here at work, and, yet, he brings this in all this baggage with him. And, so, we don't want this kind of employee.

Then the, the fifth, and this is, this is particular to family businesses, but 70 to 90% of world GDP is controlled either tacitly or directly by families and family businesses. So, I do wanna mention this, um, that these family views, that this member of the family that might be there as their failure. They say, “Gosh, you know, this is some mistake that we've had and I don't wanna be reminded every day that I didn't do my work as a parent or as a brother, as a sister. And, so, we don't want this kind of person around because it just reminds me of how poor of a job we did.”

Uh, then the sixth would be that it's unsafe. There's some safety precaution that I erroneously think comes along with this mental health disorder. And, this, kind of, last one that's related to really all six of these is this, kind of, not my neighbor phenomenon. And, this is one that we see happening so often at firms, which is, yeah, mental health is a really important thing. We need to address it. Just, I don't want it around my firm. I don't want it near my division. I don't want it around my employees. And, so, these are the kind of big seven that I see…

[00:17:56] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:17:56] Lauren Cohen:
Popping up most often. And in, they all have like slightly different forms, but they kind of fit in one of those seven together.

[00:18:02] Anne Morriss:
So, so super painful list to hear. Um, I haven't gone deep on the clinical research on this, but it's, I've spent a lot of my career, uh, in early-stage organizations, in creative organizations. And, anecdotally, in my own experience, there seems to be a high correlation of people who thrive in those environments, who are incredibly innovative, and also people who experience, uh, mental health challenges. H-how, where does that fit into your research and your case for getting this right?

[00:18:44] Lauren Cohen:
And, I'm so glad you mentioned this. It is one of the most, I would say not only misunderstood, but, incorrectly assessed aspects of mental health and mental health disorders. There is no relationship at all, no correlation between any measure of intelligence, IQ, or creativity and mental health illness, which is to say, we see this happening across that spectrum. There is absolutely no relationship, which is to say they're just as likely to pop up at every point in that distribution.

[00:19:19] Anne Morriss:
Lauren, I wanna just ask you, um, what are organizations that are getting this right, doing differently?

[00:19:25] Lauren Cohen:
I wanna start here first. Here are the things that are going on right now and that are very sensible and logical things to do that are not working. So the first one, and this is gonna be the most counterintuitive because this is a frontline treatment and that is therapy. And, it turns out when we've actually run studies on therapy, psychotherapy, the evidence is pretty middling, which is to say it doesn't work all that well or not nearly as well as people think.

[00:19:55] Anne Morriss:
I'll push back and say this.

[00:19:56] Lauren Cohen:
Yep.

[00:19:56] Anne Morriss:
Therapy is a huge category.

[00:19:59] Lauren Cohen:
Yes.

[00:19:59] Anne Morriss:
With a huge spectrum…

[00:20:00] Lauren Cohen:
Yes.

[00:20:00] Anne Morriss:
…of approaches, practitioners.

[00:20:03] Lauren Cohen:
Yes.

[00:20:03] Anne Morriss:
And, so I think it's a, that's a rough metric to measure, but go on.

[00:20:07] Lauren Cohen:
And, so it, it, it works incredibly well for some people, which is to say…

[00:20:11] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:20:11] Lauren Cohen:
But, if you know nothing else about a person, what they've tried to do is run these large sample clinical trials, and what they find is that slightly less than half a participants show any impact and only roughly a third show a positive aspect with no remissive symptoms after six months.

And, so look, you could say, gosh, that's still 30% more. And, so I completely agree with you and for those 30% it may be incredibly helpful. But, what that says is that it may not fit everyone.

[00:20:38] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:20:38] Lauren Cohen:
So, it, it might be worth trying, but it's not a panacea, right? It's not the end treatment that we're gonna need. And, in fact, I'll, I'll put another thing in that category that we're now starting to get more evidence of: education. So, they thought, gosh, if we just educate people on what these mental health ailments are and some of the treatments for them, then that's what we need to do.

So, a lot of firms run, they will have mental health education days or where they'll bring some, uh, a practitioner in to talk about it for a day and to give guidelines, and it turns out, uh, some of the RCTs that we've had on this, again, have shown some pretty modest evidence to almost nothing at all from just education events, which is what a lot of firms do.

And, so the point is, we need to be doing more. Okay? We need to at least offer more than just these two because they're not solving the problem. And, so, these are the things that we know are helping. Things like pushing toward more inclusive language, especially in the face of aggressiveness. So, things like, hey, all the employees, right, especially to coworkers, but managers, to to, to employees. We are in this together. Let's talk about the issues that we're all having together. We are a team. We're in this together. They're not, kind of, blaming in aggressive environments. Like, and in the same way, them using more humility and language, it turns out, to allow some of these mental health disorders to kind of bubble to the top and to then be addressed and making employees feel more comfortable at work.

And, that turns out to have a big impact on both worker productivity and allowing these mental health disorders to be both more expressed at work and then to be addressed.

[00:22:11] Anne Morriss:
Can you give us an example, Lauren, of like, what is a message that you have heard work?
[00:22:17] Lauren Cohen:
Yeah. And, so on the humility side, things like, uh, when a manager says, “Hey, I don't know all the answers, but let's talk about some of these issues and stressors at work or some of the reasons that I might have seen that your productivity go down,” Right?
“I don't know why. Let's talk about this. We are in this together. Okay? This is not a you thing. This is an us thing.”

[00:22:35] Anne Morriss:
And this is in a one-on-one conversation …

[00:22:38] Lauren Cohen:
Yep.

[00:22:39] Anne Morriss:
… with an employee that you think might be struggling.

[00:22:40] Lauren Cohen:
Yes, yes.

[00:22:41] Anne Morriss:
Lauren, I know you ad-advise firms, not individuals, but you have, you have immersed yourself in this world. What would you advise our listeners on how to take care of and advocate for their own mental health in organizations?

[00:23:00] Lauren Cohen:
Uh, that's probably the hardest to advise, and I'll tell you why. Because this would be bad advice, so I will not give it, which is to say, “Hey, you should go in and, and just completely put everything on the table, right? Always lay your cards on the table every time and the world will immediately accept you.” Because it won't, right? It won't. I would love for that to be true as soon as possible, and in fact, I'm trying to do whatever I can, large or small, to make that more of a reality, but we're not there yet. And, so what, what I would say is that for employees that are, kind of, going through this on a day-to-day level, they need to find a group that they can trust.

That might be family. That might be friends. And, kind of, start to build a structured environment where they can, kind of, create bubbles around what we were just talking about, right? Where they can have inclusive language, right?

Where they can have a kind of team that's in this together where they feel like they can talk about anything and that is, uh, one of the best things that they can do for their own mental health.

[00:24:05] Anne Morriss:
So, what is the best way for me to say to my boss, “Hey. I'm having a hard time. I think I might be experiencing symptoms of depression. I just, I don't feel like myself.”

[00:24:17] Lauren Cohen:
Yeah.

[00:24:18] Anne Morriss:
“I'm not showing up for work in the way I want to.” Like, and it's probably the point where this needs to be discussed somehow. What's my opening line?

[00:24:26] Lauren Cohen:
So, I think this is a great question. I haven't thought about it before, but here's so on my toes, this is what I do. Uh, I'd say, “You know, look, roughly one in three Americans experience some kind of mental health disorder, and I think I'm experiencing one right now. I'm not sure how long it's gonna last or how severe it's gonna get, but I do know this. The earlier that we can address it, the better it's gonna be. I'd love for you to be a partner in that. If not, that's completely fine. But, I wanted to let you know. I wanted to be transparent because transparency is the best way to get through this.”

So, that's what I would say, because it turns out from the, the evidence and judgment decision making, one of the best ways, most powerful ways to convince people is through numbers. So, if you can come in and say, “Gosh, a third of all Americans go through this.” then, then your boss's let’s say, “Wow, a third of Americans. I didn't know that. This really is a big problem.” And, so it frames it in a big way.

[00:25:21] Frances Frei:
Your toes are pretty good.

[00:25:22] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:25:23] Frances Frei:
When you just said you're gonna do that on your toes.

[00:25:24] Anne Morriss:
Beautiful.

[00:25:24] Frances Frei:
Pretty good. What are your toes?

[00:25:25] Anne Morriss:
What are you?

[00:25:25] Frances Frei:
Standing ovation to the toes.

[00:25:28] Anne Morriss:
What you win for offering that insight is another role play.

[00:25:33] Lauren Cohen:
Another role play! That's just what I wanted.

[00:25:36] Anne Morriss:
So, Lauren, I'm concerned that my employee, Frances…

[00:25:41] Frances Frei:
Ooh.

[00:25:41] Lauren Cohen:
Yes.

[00:25:42] Anne Morriss:
…may be experiencing symptoms of depression. She has not approached me to make this discussable, but it's affecting her work. It's affecting the culture of the office. It's affecting people's willingness to….

[00:25:57] Frances Frei:
So, striking close to home, Lauren.

[00:25:58] Anne Morriss:
…rely, um, now you're doing fine, baby. Uh, how would you advise me to, to approach that conversation and, and begin it?

[00:26:09] Lauren Cohen:
Uh, yes. And, these are incredibly hard conversations to have, right? And each one of those is gonna have a personal component that is gonna have to, kind of, weigh on this in a big way. But, this is what I would do. One of the ways to have people open up the quickest is to have some kind of shared experience with that. So, this has to do with, like, death of let's say, a close loved one.

And, so, uh, if you have had any episode yourself, you can say, “Gosh, last year, you know, when my husband died, my wife died, it was tough for me. And, it wasn't just tough when it happened, but afterwards, and I really got to a place that it was hard for me to work. And, you know, for a while I was really embarrassed about it, but now I realize it should. It's part of who I am. I bring my whole self to work every day and I'm not embarrassed about that.

And, I just want you to know that, 'cause I want this to be the kind of office where we can talk about these things. And, I want you to know if you ever want to bring that, it's totally fine. You don't need to say anything now or if there's nothing going on, totally fine. But, I want you to know, look, this is something that is, is important to me that we be the kind of office that does this, even if we haven't been in the past that I wanna start now.”

[00:27:12] Anne Morriss:
I love it, Lauren. I, I'd love to know where the, the frontier of this research is going, and then I'd love, I'd love to know what you hope listeners take away from this conversation.

[00:27:21] Lauren Cohen:
Absolutely. Electrical brain stimulation. Because we're now finding what parts of the brain kind of light up when depressive episodes happen or when anxiety episodes happen. And, so this kind of low wave electrical brain stimulation has been shown to be somewhat promising. Um, and the same thing with targeting certain gene clusters, 'cause we've seen gene clusters kind of show up in different parts of the brain. Um, and, so targeting those parts of the brain with other types of treatments as well.

And, so those types of things, even though they're at the frontier, they've been showing quite a bit of promise, and, so just staying open to kind of new, even if they seem like wacky ideas, that might be the path forward.

[00:28:01] Frances Frei:
I needed to hear them from you first, Lauren, for me to not think they were wacky. And, I bet our listeners, I bet that's gonna be true for listeners as well.

[00:28:09] Lauren Cohen:
Well, then I'm happy, I'm happy to, to un-wacky-ify them, uh, for the listeners. Okay. And, so here is the single, uh, and most research proven solution from a macro perspective that's going to solve this problem, and that is time and exposure. And, so I want to thank both of you because your podcast alone is building exactly that foundation we need, right?

Getting the more out there, the more people hear about this, the more they see it, the more it's part of their everyday lives that has been shown to knock down barriers, like a barrier to mental health issues. And, so I think it's going to take time, it's gonna take exposure, but we're gonna get there.

[00:28:51] Anne Morriss:
And, then if I'm listening to this and I, uh, I'm persuaded, I want my firm to be a place where, uh, everyone can thrive. Where do I even start on this issue?

[00:29:07] Lauren Cohen:
Uh, the first thing and the most important thing, especially within this fast changing space, is to find a source of information, and I'll give you a couple of them and stay tuned. And, they are the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the World Health Organization. They are big in this space and I trust them both.

[00:29:25] Anne Morriss:
Amazing. Uh, Lauren, thank you so much for spending time with us and, and on such an important topic. Uh, I know we just scratched the surface, um, and so I hope you'll come back and let us know how it's going on the frontier.

[00:29:39] Lauren Cohen:
I, I want to thank you both so much for both having me on and elevating this on your platform because you really are an important part of the solution. So, thank you both so much.

[00:30:07] Anne Morriss:
Ugh. I have so many thoughts and emotions after having that conversation. I'm trying to sort through them. Frances, what do you hope listeners take away from this conversation?

[00:30:16] Frances Frei:
I hope listeners take away that mental health is another pebble…

[00:30:25] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:30:25] Frances Frei:
…In the obstacles to performance, it needn't be a boulder. It's a pebble. And, if we cannot paint it any particularly shameful color, uh, that would be great. So, what I hope people take is that it's manageable, um, for organizations. I mean, I am so compelled by the numbers. I had no idea.

[00:30:47] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Like the probability that your colleagues and employees are gonna confront a mental health issue is higher than the probability that they'll have a, have a physical illness. I love the bereavement example because the probability that we're gonna experience in some version of that during our working life is quite high. Uh. And, and there is no shame or far less shame attached.

[00:31:19] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:31:19] Anne Morriss:
With the struggles we have to return to work and to show up in the way that we aspire to after a traumatic event, like the loss of a loved one and it, to me, it, it feels like a way into this discussion because, because of the lack of stigma.

[00:31:37] Frances Frei:
Yeah. I, I, I'm always looking for the right way in, and I love that this is a, a safe and universal way in.

[00:31:46] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And, I know there's a movement to, uh to, to blow up this idea of human resources and your human resources department 'cause it sounds so Orwellian and cold.

[00:31:57] Frances Frei:
He just brought the most humanity to human resources I've heard in a long time.

[00:32:00] Anne Morriss:
But, but the, there is some power in bringing that lens to it.

[00:32:04] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:32:04] Anne Morriss:
'Cause it is the resources that we have an incentive to really protect…

[00:32:09] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:32:10] Anne Morriss:
…Uh, inside organization. So I, uh, I, I was provoked in the best sense.

[00:32:18] Frances Frei:
Thank you for listening everyone. We wanna hear from you. If you wanna figure out a workplace problem together, send us a message. Email us at fixable@ted.com or call us at 234-FIXABLE. That's 234-349-2253 and you can now text us there too.

[00:32:37] Anne Morriss:
Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss.

[00:32:42] Frances Frei:
And, me, Frances Frei.

[00:32:44] Anne Morriss:
Our team includes Isabelle Carter, Constanza Gallardo, Lidia Jean Kott, Grace Rubenstein, Sarah Nics, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, Banban Cheng, and Roxanne Hai Lash. This episode was mixed by Louis at Story Yard.

[00:33:00] Frances Frei:
If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out.

[00:33:07] Anne Morriss:
And, one more thing, if you can please take a second to leave us a review. It really helps us make a great show.

[00:33:15] Frances Frei:
And, it totally helps the search algorithm.