Q&A: Maintaining mental health upon returning to the workplace during COVID-19 pandemic
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As many individuals are returning to the workplace now and in the coming months, a smooth transition into a new routine is vital for maintaining mental health and productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Healio Psychiatry spoke with K. Luan Phan, MD, chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral health at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, regarding the unique challenges individuals may face upon their return to work and how clinicians and employers can aid this transition from a mental health perspective.
Q: What mental health challenges might individuals face as they return to work during the age of COVID-19 and with infection prevention measures in place?
A: It's a matter of individual differences and how people respond to the ongoing threat of infection and the ongoing stress. Because there's still a risk of infection out there, feelings of anxiety, worry and apprehension will continue to manifest as people leave their homes and return to the work environment. They will likely wonder to themselves whether the infection rate or risk for contracting the virus really changed enough for them to be back at work safely. They may also wonder about how the workplace will be different with the workforce returning in full or in part. They will also encounter new stressors that might not have existed before. Many individuals were getting used to the new normal with a routine regarding working from home, and now they've got to shift and transition back to the workplace. It's another change that people will have to accommodate, especially since they might have picked up work habits from home that they may feel they need to abandon upon returning to the workplace.
Lastly, people may experience increased stress because of daycare responsibilities that will exacerbate when they return to work, given that daycare, schools and camps are not back to full force like they used to be. There's also the potential for feelings of guilt, since parents may be re-exposing themselves back to the workforce and may thus need to re-expose children back to daycare, camps or other activities where they may have an increased risk for infection. This would come in light of having done the difficult job of maintaining safety for all these months. Overall, there's an accumulated and diverse set of anxiety, worry and apprehension that comes along with reintegration back to the workplace.
Q: Are there any potential mental health benefits of returning to the workplace?
A: Some people acclimated well to working from home, whereas others did not, for a variety of reasons. Many have had to balance working from home, attending meetings by phone or video, home schooling and daycare all in the course of their waking hours. Some people haven’t responded well to that, since it may be more stressful working from home than at the workplace. The potential to return to the workplace for those individuals who struggled at home will find this to be a relief, since they may get back to the aspects of the routine that were beneficial. For example, people can get back to aspects of the routine that they loved. Some people love working in the office, with the ability to leave home and have a circumscribed place for work that is designated as such. There's also more of a structure back in the workplace that they may not have had at home.
Lastly, they have missed coworkers and colleagues who can serve as extended families of sorts, especially now. We build friendships and great working relationships with people, and that sense of workplace camaraderie has always been a great stress buffer for people. By returning to work, some people might enjoy having that opportunity to actually meet people in the workplace rather than by phone or by video, and I think that sort of interaction could be positive for certain individuals.
Q: Are individuals with certain mental health diagnoses, such as those with anxiety, depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder, at increased risk for adverse outcomes related to returning to an altered working environment during the pandemic?
A: It all rests heavily on people’s sense of safety, concern and certainty or lack thereof in the workplace. The more they feel as though they are at risk or that their feelings aren't being validated or that the workplace is not accommodating, they will have more apprehension, worry and anxiety. They could feel more depressed and isolated, even if they were coming back to work. They may feel that their feelings are abnormal or invalidated in some way. For those with OCD, particularly those with contamination fears, these feelings will be amplified because these individuals probably had a lot of control about the cleanliness of their homes and they now need to worry about the cleanliness and the safety of their workplace, as well as the travel in between.
Underlying mental health challenges can always be exacerbated if the workplace is perceived to be more threatening to them. The adverse outcomes really manifest in terms of feeling isolated, more stressed and on edge all day long at work. That may, in turn, lead to a lack of productivity while at work, including being distracted, not staying on task, having more difficulty connecting with people and then ultimately, the risk is that people then will end up taking more sick leave from their work, and that's a loss of productivity when someone ends up feeling too sick or too emotionally overwhelmed to be at work.
Q: What steps can employers take to help their employees’ mental health upon their return to the workplace?
A: It's really critical for employers and team leaders to help their employees and workers return to an environment that's safe and to prepare them well for that return. That preparation is really about giving clear, transparent and consistent information about what that transition will look like in the new workplace. It starts with helping people prepare through information, giving a clear message, and then that gets applied to the workplace. Are there checkpoints in place on entry to work in terms of checking on symptoms, checking on temperature, testing on risk for exposure to COVID-19 back at home or with others social gatherings so that everyone enters a workplace at a healthy state?
Another important step is encouraging people to stay home if they have symptoms or have a high temperature rather than coming to work and having a policy that makes that very clear. In the workplace, there has to be a strict and firm encouragement for hygiene, including regular hand washing, availability of hand sanitizers and protective equipment like masks, requiring people to wear a mask and to physically distance from one another and all the public health recommendations that need to be strictly enforced at the workplace to make everyone feel safe.
Q: What steps can clinicians take to help their patients’ mental health upon their return to the workplace?
A: It’s important to keep patients informed and to help them prepare a set of behavioral strategies on returning to the workplace, especially if that workplace and transition is anxiety-provoking. Clinicians can validate patients’ anxieties and help them work through these feelings while addressing the facts and truths behind re-entry that will help someone be in control of their environment. There are clear cognitive and behavioral strategies that mental health professionals can use to help their patients to transition back in a safe way. Also, it's important to build in, throughout the workday, ways to reduce stress, decompress and reduce feelings of anxiety and apprehension during the day. This might be done through incorporation of physical activity during the workday, breathing exercises, relaxation exercises and giving patients a sense of control.
Clinicians can let patients know that it's OK not to let your guard down, and to physically distance to minimize risk for infection. For both employers and health care professionals, it is vital to create and cultivate a sense of teamwork, a notion that we're all in this together and we have to look out for one another. The only way to move forward and stay healthy is if we look out for each other, validate each other and work together, rather than create divisions or spaces where people don't feel safe emotionally or physically.