Mind Matters Mental Health Checks

Reliable mental health assessments can be affected by:

• Misunderstanding of the questions being asked.
• Overly optimistic or pessimistic disclosure of mood (surveys find a tendency towards pessimism).

The reliability of Mind Matters Mental Health Checks is maximised by:

• Careful positioning of questions and further explanation where needed.
• Helping the employee take a balanced view of their mood during the weeks leading up to the day of the assessment.

The information disclosed during Step 1 is input into our expert system which provides objective and quantified mental health assessments.

An Anxiety calculation uses the GAD-7 tool for assessment of the four most common anxiety disorders:

• Generalised Anxiety Disorder.
• Panic Disorder.
• Social Phobia.
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

A Depression calculation uses the PHQ-9 tool for assessment of the severity of depressive symptoms, not explained by substance use or another medical or psychiatric condition.

GAD-7 and PHQ-9 are accredited by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for measuring the presence and severity of Anxiety and Depression in primary care situations (e.g., during GP consultations and Mind Matters Assessments).

Two key clinical components of Mind Matters Mental Health Checks encourage the employee to recognise and disclose any underlying stressors:

1. The objectivity of the GAD-7 and PHQ-9 calculators helps to de-personalise the assessment and externalise any sense that the employee is being “judged”.
2. We will have been:
   • Establishing trust and rapport.
   • Listening without judgement and acknowledging feelings.
   • Carefully listening for disclosure of the underlying stressors.

Subject to your prior agreement, we carefully categorise any work related stressors described by your employee into one or more of 6 sources such as; Company (where I work), Job (what I do), Resources (the equipment I use).

For Homeworkers, we can also record one or more of 4 additional homeworking related stressors described by your employee such as; Isolation and Loss of Support.

The Mind Matters Mental Health Checks are designed to encourage and inform supportive conversations.  The support we discuss will be informed by:

1. The Anxiety and Depression calculations themselves and our assessment of the clarity with which the employee understood and answered the questions.
2. Symptom history, whether; recent, recurrent or persistent.
3. Availability of a support network, family history, lifestyle and degree of self-care / neglect.
4. Any strong indications towards a diagnosis e.g., autism, bi-polar disorder, psychosis.
5. The source of any underlying stressors.

Some employees request a continuation of their Mind Matters Mental Health Check conversation:

• They have enjoyed the safe space established with our Specialist Practitioner.
• They may have invested emotional capital by opening up and disclosing information which they have never shared with their; life partner, family, friends or colleagues.
• They may have moderate or severe anxiety and / or depression but do not wish to follow a referral pathway to their GP or to other specialists.

Our response to these requests will be agreed with you when we set up the Mind Matters Mental Health Check programme for your organisation.

The Mind Matters Mental Health Check will have:

• Reliably and objectively quantified your employee’s mental health.
• Measured the extent to which any work / homeworking related stressors are affecting your employee’s mental health.
• Provided us with context to help translate data into knowledge and understanding.  For example, the data might show that 75% of employees cite “Career (My future)” as a source of work related stress.  However, the majority of the 75% have minimal to mild anxiety / depression scores, suggesting that whilst Career prospects might be an issue, it is unlikely to be causing or exacerbating mental health issues.

To put you in touch with employee worries and anxieties and help inform actions you might take at an organisational level to address any work related stressors, we can report on this data:

• Anonymously by summing and averaging the content of individual assessments up to an organisational level.
• Combining it with the context in which it was generated.

In the example above, “Career” was most frequently mentioned together with words such as; re-structuring, rationalising, relocating.  It was rarely mentioned together with words such as; thwarted ambition and discrimination.