Mental Health Issues as a Taboo Topic in the Workplace
Mental health problems, ours or our child's, are a bigger workplace taboo than sexual orientation, and speaking about them takes courage. I talk about this taboo in my TEDx talk, which has over 128,000 views.
Mental health in the workplace in short
- According to Rafał Szymański, in his work and business there is a rule that children are not talked about, and talking about children with mental health issues is doubly forbidden; depression is still a taboo topic and creates exclusion.
- Rafał Szymański points to the NIK report, which states that Polish youth psychiatry does not exist, and notes that everyone involved remains silent about it.
- To break the taboo of silence and hiding, we need to start talking loudly about children's mental health issues, so that parents, of whom there are a huge number, put pressure on politicians.
- Rafał Szymański talked about children's mental health on the Onet Rano morning programme the day after the premiere of the book “Szramy” (Scars), which collects other parents' stories; Bartek Węglarczyk said there that children with mental health issues are not important to the government because they don't have voting rights.
If there’s any taboo topic in the workplace, it’s sexual orientation, but did you know there’s an even bigger taboo than that? And speaking about it requires damn courage? This taboo topic is mental health issues. Ours or our child’s.
„This happens because in my work and business, there’s a rule that we don’t talk about children. Talking about children with mental health issues is doubly forbidden. Because such illnesses don’t exist, because it’s impossible that my, your, his child could be sick. Depression is still a taboo topic and creates exclusion.”
This is a quote from my TEDx talk, which now has over 128,000 views.
Today I talked about the need for courage in speaking about our children’s mental health issues, not hiding the state of Polish youth psychiatry (it doesn’t exist, as stated in the NIK report that everyone involved remains silent about) and stories of other parents, collected in the book “Szramy” (Scars), which premiered yesterday.
Thank you Bartek Węglarczyk and especially you Janusz Schwertner for addressing this topic in the morning Onet Rano program.
We need to start talking about this loudly to break the taboo of silence and hiding, so that parents, of whom there are a huge number, put pressure on politicians.
Bartek said during the interview: Children with mental health issues are not important to the government because they don’t have voting rights.
I know that young people who cross the hospital threshold lose their voting rights and often stop being treated as human beings and become just patients. Let’s change this!
PS: it’s a shame we have a pandemic and I couldn’t be in that car live.
