‘Mental Health at Work’: DOL launches PSA

Washington — In an effort to promote conversations – and combat stigma – around mental health at work, the Department of Labor has published a public service announcement.

The PSA – part of DOL’s Mental Health at Work initiative – features real-life stories from workers and employers, perspectives from mental health experts, and comments from acting Labor Secretary Julie Su. “We hope it can help start or deepen conversations in your own workplaces,” DOL says. 

Workplace leaders “have the ability to make substantive changes,” Mike Weiner, director of EY assist for Ernst & Young’s employee assistance program, says in the PSA. That could involve simply promoting the mental health benefits available to workers.

“We knew that for over three decades that the usage of our proactive mental health benefit that offers our people no-cost counseling sessions … was very low,” Weiner says. “Low usage was actually … similar to other workplaces, and it had been like that for several decades. But since we started our campaign, the usage of our proactive mental health benefit has increased five times. It has sustained it and it began to increase for the first time in 30 years, the very same month that we began our initiative in 2016.”