It was James Routledge’s own battle with anxiety while winding down his first startup that led him to launchSanctus. He was also experiencing stress, panic attacks and sleepless nights, but didn’t feel he could confide in his new colleagues. “I didn’t talk about it, I didn’t want to admit weakness or vulnerability,” he says.
Through Sanctus, Routledge offers coaching sessions to businesses to help them improve their approach to mental health. In a small business environment, he says it’s the founders who must set the precedent. “Create a culture where vulnerability is accepted and it’s OK for people to say: ‘I’m not feeling so good, this didn’t go so well or I’m feeling a little bit stressed.’ Mental health is not only about the darkness and depression, that’s like only talking about obesity and disease in physical health.”
A report from Business in the Community (BITC) found that mental health is still shrouded in a culture of silence and stigma in UK workplaces. Of the 20,000 people surveyed, three in four said they had experienced symptoms of poor mental health at some point in their lives.
[For more of this story, written by Emma Featherstone, go to https://www.theguardian.com/sm...-darkness-depression]
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