Addressing Mental Health in Zimbabwean Workplaces: A Collaborative Initiative (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: On average, every working Zimbabwean spends about one-third of their lives at work, which is a lot of time for individuals to be exposed to work-related stresses. This can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, and depression, yet there is little to no mental health and psychosocial support offered in the workplace. The workplace does not provide any form of mental health services. The biggest challenges for workplaces providing mental health services has been due to a lack of human capital to provide these services in the workplace. To address the mental health care gap within the workplace and Zimbabwe at large, the Ministry of Health and Child Care, with support from the Friendship Bench and World Health Organization Zimbabwe, launched a Mental Health in the Workplace Package. As part of the package, Friendship Bench trained trainers of trainers who will further cascade the training down in their various organizations to ensure they have mental health psychosocial support services available within the workplace.

Speaker 2: So what the government is helping also the Ministry of Health do first, make sure that mental health issues are not brought to the fore. So this has been capacitated by implementing a lot of policy documents so that most people are actually aware of what mental health is.

Speaker 3: We are training people first and then equip those who will deliver the service within the workplace so that as many people as possible can access mental health services in the medias of their workplace.

Speaker 4: A lot of the costs for mental health are due to lost productivity in the workplace. Over 90% are costs which organizations incur because of lost productivity. This looks like presentism where someone is there but they are severely depressed, they will not meet deadlines, they are not productive, they don't contribute meaningfully.

Speaker 5: To the general populace, my message is don't be silent. Where you need help, please open up.

Speaker 4: I would encourage organizations to partner with the Ministry of Health, Friendship Bench and WHO and any other key stakeholders so that we roll out mental health in the workplace. And remember, your person in the workplace is your breadwinner. If we target the breadwinner, it means we are targeting the whole family. They can cascade information even into their families and before we know it, we have a Zimbabwe that is capacitated to detect and to deal with mental health conditions before they become self-healed.