Distressing times

Personalizing help

Sound mental health in the workplace has never been more important for employees and employers in Hong Kong. A survey carried out in September 2020 by City Mental Health Alliance Hong Kong - a nonprofit membership organization that aims to create a culture of good mental health for workers - revealed that up to 27 percent of the city's employees had experienced mental health problems amid the COVID-19 outbreak - higher than the average of 22 percent of the places the organization surveyed in the Asia-Pacific region. So far this year, the number of people in Hong Kong who have complained of mental health problems has climbed to 42 percent, according to the alliance's latest poll conducted earlier this month.

In a report in 2019, the alliance noted that Hong Kong employers already had to bear high but invisible costs due to their employees' mental health problems that led to many of them being constantly absent from work, and some having to work longer than required, along with a big staff turnover. The rising costs had exceeded companies' investments in their employee assistance programs.

More employers are now paying attention to the issue and spending more on improving the well-being of their staff. "We have noticed a growing number of companies trying out or introducing in-house psychological support programs for their employees or giving them more assistance through their EAPs since the pandemic began," says Hannah McLeod, managing director of CMHAHK. "When COVID-19 broke out more than two and a half years ago, we found that the number of our members that had introduced flexible work arrangements and carried out mental health awareness campaigns had gone up by 40 percent."

These companies have been taking various measures to help their staff. "Some of them offer in-house counseling, some work directly with private organizations, and some recruit professionals directly or through insurance packages," says McLeod.

However, young employees like Yang may still be disappointed when trying to get professional support from their employers - although companies are aware of the importance of their staff's mental health, few of them know how to do it better.

A similar situation has developed on the Chinese mainland too. Xue (full name withheld on request), 24, works at a medium-sized company with about 700 employees. She turned to a complimentary online counseling service during the lockdown in Shanghai earlier this year.

The service was arranged by her employer with an agency offering psychological aid. But Xue described the experience as more like a "one-off chitchat" - the person she talked to had no professional psychological training, didn't offer any guidance or suggestions about what steps should be taken, and was unwilling to talk for even a minute longer.

"Although professional human support is important and effective, there are barriers - it may not suit (the needs of) everyone; there aren't enough professionals on a per-person basis; and only a small number of people would seek professional human support," says Megan Lam, co-founder and CEO of Neurum Health - a healthcare tech company that helps workers and individuals to achieve mental well-being in the right manner.

She cited data showing there are currently about 23,000 psychiatrists on the mainland, with a ratio of 1.7 to every 100,000 people. "Human support itself is not scalable, and the system is already overburdened."