While taking a programmatic approach to creating mental health in an organization is imperative, it cannot be done without addressing the root causes. Building trust and creating an environment where employees feel cared about takes time, energy and effort. Too often, leaders want to skim over the relational parts of leadership and fail to develop productive social infrastructure within their workplace. As trust and emotional security form the basis for employee engagement, cooperative behaviour, commitment, and loyalty, it is imperative to understand what employees need to feel psychologically secure and to emerge from their behavior that is driven by fear and anxiety.

1. Creating Mental Health in Organizations
~ Time for Change the Paradigm for Dealing with the Escalating Problem ~
By Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D.
Mental health is the capacity for each of us to feel,
think and act in ways that strengthen our ability to
enjoy life and deal with its inherent challenges. It is
often described as how we feel and act ‐‐ our
behaviors, mood, and attitude toward our lives and
our environment. We often reveal our mental
health through our ability to cope and respond to
stress, how authentically we express ourselves,
how we relate to family and friends, and how we
operate at home, work, or school.
Symptoms of poor mental health such as
depression and anxiety are all on the rise. Mental
illness costs organizations billions of dollars
annually in lost productivity and increased benefit
expenses. In fact, it has become the number one
cause of disability in Canada. The Conference Board
of Canada recently estimated the cost to the
economy of lost labour market participation from
the six most common conditions afflicting the
working‐age population – depression, anxiety,
bipolar disorder, social phobia, panic disorder, and
agoraphobia. These six alone will cost about $20.7
billion in 2012. Advancing at a rate of almost two
per cent each every year, this will grow to $29.1
billion annually by 2030. Despite all we know
about mental illness and its treatment,
organizations continue to be at a loss as to how to
address this growing crisis.
While the costs associated mental illness in the
workplace is not appropriately determined by
Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D. ©2012
employers, mental illness can be directly and
indirectly linked to the bottom line. This includes
decreased revenues, increased expenses and the
negative impact on customer and peer
relationships. Many large companies now realize
that their employees’ productivity is connected to
their emotional health and well‐being but are at a
loss as to what to do about it.
What Causes Mental Illness?
Mental distress is a direct result of frustrated
emotional needs and living in a constant state of
self‐protection. It happens because of thoughts and
feelings occurring in the brain, that lead to more
despair and feelings of helplessness. Mental health
and well‐being comes when we are intrinsically
satisfied by what we are doing and when our
emotional needs are met at work. Negative mental
states or brain states can be transformed when we
know what we must do to satisfy our needs.
Unfortunately, we know more about how to take
care of our cars than we do our brains. Too bad
people don’t come with user manuals!
The lack of understanding around emotions and
behaviour has created a stigma around mental
illness. People are often ashamed of how they are
feeling and are reluctant to seek help. In addition,
there are so many stigmas attached to mental
illness that it prevents people who are suffering
(20% of all people) from seeking help. According to
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2. The Canadian Mental Health Association, almost
half of those suffering never get treatment.
Too often, the responsibility for their employee’s
mental health is tasked to organizational leaders
without equal expectation for employees to
participate. Many try to make employees feel
better by giving employees positive feedback or
having a dress down day on Friday. They offer
stress reduction programs, yoga or lunch & learns,
all that have some positive effects, but fail to get at
the root cause of the issues. Mental health
programs must be created to from two
perspectives: “What is the organization doing to
create the context for mental health?” and “What
is each employee doing to sustain their own
mental health?”
How is Your Organizational
Culture Impacting Mental Health?
Culture ‘sets the tone’ for an organization; if that
culture is negative it can undermine the
effectiveness of the best programs, policies and
services intended to support the workforce. An
unhealthy culture creates more stress in the
workplace, which lowers employee well‐being. If an
organization has a culture of ‘profit at all costs’ and
constant chaotic urgency, it can create an
environment in which burnout is the norm. While
the term “emotional intelligence” is common, the
acceptance of an emotional life of employees at
work is still far from being realized. We hear it all
the time from leaders “I just don’t have the time to
deal with emotional issues or conflict. Can’t you do
something about it?” The idea that how employees
feel doesn’t affect their work is well known myth.
However, most employers still don’t know how to
or don’t care to get involved with their employees
to partner with them to create mental health at
Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D. ©2012
work. Despite the costs, and despite the increase in
mental illness in employees, many employers are
reluctant to take an business based approach to
creating mental health in their organization.
Employee disengagement, presenteeism,
depression and anxiety are common emotional
symptoms of mental dis‐tress in organizations.
Often these symptoms are caused by the
organizational culture at work. The way employees
are expected to work (deadlines, workload, unclear
expectations) and the social context they work in,
including relationships with managers and
supervisors, colleagues and coworkers, and clients
or customers can negatively affect the culture. In
addition, a work environment that does not pay
attention to whether or not employees trust their
leaders and feel they are honest and fair in their
dealings sets the stage for mental illness and
dysfunction. Employees’ psychological responses to
work and work conditions are at the root and need
to be addressed rather than ignored or dismissed
by leaders.
While taking a programmatic approach to creating
mental health in an organization is imperative, it
cannot be done without addressing these root
causes. Building trust and creating an environment
where employees feel cared about takes time,
energy and effort. Too often, leaders want to skim
over the relational parts of leadership and fail to
develop productive social processes within their
workplace. As trust and emotional security form
the basis for employee engagement, cooperative
behaviour, commitment, and loyalty, it is
imperative to understand what employees need to
feel psychologically secure and to emerge from
their behavior that is driven by fear and anxiety.
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3. Time for a New Paradigm to
Creating Mental Health in
Organizations
The shift that needs to be made is from focusing on
mental illness to creating mental health. This
approach is inclusive of the needs of employees
and the needs of the organization. Because mental
health is an emotional problem, any program for
creating mental health in organizations must be
built by addressing both needs. Using the Striving
Styles Whole Person, Whole Organization Mental
Health Model for designing programs that ensure
both needs are met, organizations build ensure
their framework is inclusive of the whole
person/whole organization.
The following are critical elements of the Model to
make the paradigm shift to creating mental health.
The program:
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shifts the focus from trying to fix the problem
of mental illness to empowering employees to
create mental health over the long term
address the cultural norms that foster mental
dis‐stress and dysfunction
gets employees to stop blaming the
organization and their managers for how they
feel and to take their mental health into their
own hands
identifies the predominant needs of
employees, using the Striving Styles Personality
System, and creates a culture that is supportive
of employee need satisfaction
trains leaders and managers to engage
employees and to identify what they are doing
that might be frustrating their employees
needs
helps leaders and managers get past the fears
they may have around employees emotions,
Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D. ©2012

teaching them to separate the issue from the
emotional state of the employee
helps remove the stigma of mental health
issues
Employers can attend to Employee
Needs by Helping Employees:
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take responsibility for their own mental health
by understanding what is expected of them in
the MH Program around participation
understand their predominant need that must
be met for them to be satisfied in their work
understand the beliefs that create barriers to
engagement and help employees work them
through
build self‐awareness and self‐management
skills
build awareness of what they need to feel at
work to be satisfied based on their own brain
style and what to do about it when they don’t
to engage in the creation and maintenance of
an open environment that fosters group unity
see their progress by providing them with
ongoing feedback about changes in their levels
of engagement, resilience, adaptability and
productivity
Employers can Attend to
Organizational Needs by:
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creating a dynamic work environment where
employees feel valued for who they are and
what they contribute
providing opportunities for teams to
strengthen relationships through shared
experiences (i.e. regular and frequent team
meetings, training, team building, etc. )
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4. 
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identify leaders whose leadership style creates
anxiety, fear and distress in employees and
provide coaching and training
identify departments, teams, workloads that
raise stress and anxiety levels and create plans
to alleviate the problems
provide conflict management and
communication training with facilitated round
table follow up sessions to encourage working
through conflict and using new skills
communicating frequently about what is going
on in the business (i.e. town hall meetings,
lunch with the management team, etc.)
holding everyone accountable for their
participation in the Creating Mental Health
Program and Strategy. In particular managers
and senior leaders must be held accountable
for their very important role in making it a
success
Outcomes
Investing in a brain‐based program for creating
mental health reduces the spending on employee
absenteeism, reduced productivity and benefit
costs associated with mental illness. Organizations
that focus on ensuring the experiences employees
have at work and in their relationships increase
employee sense of their own value, build
confidence and engage their intrinsic motivation.
Emotional and social support engender a sense of
belonging and a robust platform for employee
retention. By building a culture that focuses on
creating mental health, an organization builds a
solid platform for the success of the organization
and its members.
Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D. ©2012
About Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D.
Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D. is a clinical psychotherapist
and corporate therapist. She has more than 35
years’ experience helping individuals and
organizations create mental health. She works with
individuals and organizations providing
assessments that increase their understanding of
how personal dynamics impact upon relationships,
interpersonal, team and organizational
effectiveness. She conducts interventions and
mediation for clients who are experiencing
business challenges as a result of conflict
within primary relationships (partners,
leadership groups, teams, boards, etc.).
She is the co‐creator of the Striving Styles
Personality System, an evolution of Jung’s Theory
of Psychological Type and the co‐author of Who
Are You Meant to Be? A Step by Step Process
for Discovering and Achieving Your Full
Potential
Anne holds a Post Doctorate Degree in Therapeutic
Counselling and is a graduate of the Centre for
Training in Psychotherapy and studied at the
Masterson Institute for Disorders of the Self (New
York). She attended Ryerson University and the
Institute for Management Training for
organizational development and management
studies. Anne has also completed certificate
programs in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and
Alternate Dispute Resolution. She is certified to
administer a number of assessment instruments
including the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator, BarOn
EQ‐i (Emotional Intelligence Indicator) and Thomas
Kilmann (Conflict Styles). Anne has conducted
Mindfulness‐Based Stress Reduction Programs
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5. since 2006 at her clinic and in organizations.
Contact her at anned@annedranitsaris.com.
Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D. ©2012
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