Mental health advocacy through human personal experience

I have long been an advocate of mental health. At Chubb Insurance I was a co-founder of an internal network which took the subject of mental health from being a small part of a general diversity and inclusion (D&I) group to a network of its own, I also co-founded a cross-market wellbeing group within Insurance and have led projects ensuring that more managers across organisations I have worked for have been mental health first aid trained.

Why have I gone to great lengths to support this topic? Sure, it's a topic which has come up during my career in HR but the truth is it took my own personal experience for me to really appreciate the impact poor mental health can have.

I was in my early 20's when my mental health took a turn from being day-to-day concerns and stress to something that was more of an issue. A mixture of bereavement and serious illness within the family came just as I was beginning my career and I think it was a case of too many things at once. On the face of it, I was doing well. I had just graduated university and left my first role in the city at Allianz to begin my first full-time HR role where I was also studying for my CIPD qualification. During the course of the 12 months, I would say I was struggling, I also managed to get promoted twice. Life was good but inside I couldn't shake feelings of anxiety, fear for the future and feelings that I was not living up to my own expectations.

This period of my life made me realise that as good as people's lives can look on the outside (especially with the social media showing a constant highlights reel of people), it can take personal circumstances completely out of the individual's control to make things more challenging - the cliché rings so true, you sometimes don't know what people are dealing with behind their public persona.

My advice to anyone struggling with poor mental health of any severity would be simply to share the burden with a medical professional or someone trusted. As soon as I did, I was able to contextualise the things I was experiencing and talk to people who could help me look past them. Whilst it took time to recover, I was able to move forward knowing what my triggers are and I'm able to identify the signs of poor mental health developing so I can address it earlier.

Fast forward to the present day and I am pleased to say that I have continued my career and whilst things still happen in life which test my resilience, I have methods of processing them to ensure that they are less likely to have the same impact as they did to me 10-years ago. To manage my mental wellbeing I make sure that I take time away from my job to do things that I enjoy, that includes spending time with my 6-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son and watching Colchester United (although the latter isn't always good for my happiness!).

Cliché's often stand the test of time because they are true. When it comes to mental health, talking is the best and most important first step to feeling like yourself again.