Minds Over Meetings E-Book

Kody Green

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 252

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

How to manage your mental health at work and create supportive environments for teams you lead

Drawing on popular influencer Kody Green's inspirational story as a diagnosed person with schizophrenia who succeeded in finding and maintaining a job across diverse industry sectors including production, distribution, office settings, and management, Minds Over Meetings: A Personal Perspective on Wellness in the Workplace provides practical strategies for fostering an understanding, empathetic, and supportive and inclusive work environment as well as self-care and coping strategies to help all professionals manage their mental health better at work.

Backed by the latest research findings in the field and emphasizing the vital role of open and honest communication, Green explores topics including:

• Finding available accommodations through employee assistance programs (EAP) and the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
• Retaining talent in the workplace by promoting education and fighting stigma
• Building relationships between friends and colleagues to strengthen teamwork

Minds Over Meetings: A Personal Perspective on Wellness in the Workplace earns a well-deserved spot on the bookshelves of all individuals seeking to thrive in the workplace through effective management of their mental health, along with all managers and business leaders seeking to create an open and supportive environment to improve worker wellbeing.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Part I: Introduction to Mental Health in the Workplace

Chapter 1: All About Me and My Diagnosis

Note

Chapter 2: Mental Health Versus Mental Illness

Some Definitions for You

Why Knowing the Difference Is Important

Why Early Intervention Is Important

Notes

Chapter 3: Stigma at the Watercooler

We’re Not Making It Up

We’re Allowed to Take Care of Ourselves

Other Misconceptions

We Are Allowed to Speak Up

Note

Part II: Being on the Job with Mental Health Issues

Chapter 4: “Should I Tell My Boss?”

Deciding to Tell Your Boss

Okay, but When Is the Best Time to Bring It Up?

Should You Trust HR?

If You’re Still Not Convinced

Chapter 5: Understanding Accommodations and Your Rights

Employee Assistance Programs

Family Medical Leave Act

Reasonable Accommodations

Privacy and Retaliation

Notes

Chapter 6: Unmasking and Setting Boundaries

Chapter 7: Burnouts and Breakdowns

Tips for Recognizing Burnout

Tips for Avoiding Burnout

It’s Not Just You: Everyone Needs to Set Boundaries

What to Do If You Do Burn Out

Notes

Chapter 8: Self-Care for the 9-to-5 Grind

What Is Self-Care?

Preventative Self-Care

Chapter 9: Care Team, Assemble!

Clinical

Family

Peers

Other Friends and Coworkers

Your Care Team

Chapter 10: Sharing Stories and the Realities of Mental Health at Work

Meet Gabe

Meet Michelle

Part III: Supporting Employees with Mental Health Issues

Chapter 11: “Leave Your Problems at the Door” and Other Outdated Workplace Anecdotes

Chapter 12: How Employers Can Improve Workplaces

Why Retaining Employees Is Important

Promoting Mental Health Awareness in the Workplace

Mental Health Awareness on a Budget

Be Proactive

Follow Through

Setting the Tone

Leading by Example

The Benefits of Supporting Employees’ Mental Health

Notes

Chapter 13: How My Coworkers Made Work Possible for Me

Chapter 14: From Surviving to Thriving

Gabe’s Success Story

Michelle’s Success Story

My Success Story

Moving On

Chapter 15: Redefining Success in the Professional World

Appendix

Resources

Laws

Legal-Related Resources

Support Groups

Job Boards for People with Mental Illness

Podcasts

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedicatoin

Preface

Begin Reading

Appendix Resources

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

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MINDS OVER MEETINGS

A Personal Perspective on Wellness in the Workplace

KODY GREEN

Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available

ISBN: 9781394289592 (Cloth)ISBN: 9781394289608 (ePub)ISBN: 9781394289585 (ePDF)

Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © marozhkastudio/Adobe StockAuthor Photo: © Kody Green

To Mom, for always being there to teach me about life, work, or mental health, even when she struggled to care for herself.

Preface

Hello, my name is Kody Green (he/him), and I had my first symptoms of psychosis and a psychotic break at 18, which led to me dropping out of college, losing my job, and falling into addiction. I struggled for more than two years undiagnosed and in active addiction. After being incarcerated for charges related to my addiction, I received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, which also led to battles with mental health issues like increased stress, anxiety, and depression.

After I became stable with the help of medication and treatment, I worked at various jobs – but always hid my illness while having setbacks and then either losing my job or moving on before they could fire me. It wasn’t until I had a breakthrough conversation with an HR manager, which I’ll tell you about in Chapter 1, that I started down the path I am on today.

Currently, I am a motivational speaker, mental health advocate, and content creator with almost two million followers across social media platforms. I started making content about schizophrenia and mental health awareness in 2019, when I was pursuing a degree in HR management hoping to advocate for employees struggling with mental health or mental illness. I wanted to use social media to spread awareness about these topics by sharing stories of my own experiences with schizophrenia and mental health issues.

Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, my social media following ballooned to more than one million followers. There was a huge influx of people seeking content about mental health because of the pandemic. The pandemic caused many people to have to start addressing mental health and acknowledging how difficult major life events can be. Isolation can be difficult for anyone and can have detrimental impacts on a person’s mental health. People were having to learn to cope with this ongoing isolation, loss, and situational uncertainty. I was speaking all over the country at colleges, conventions, and workplaces talking about mental health, overcoming addiction, and embracing the need for mental health awareness at work.

I’ve talked to people who have shared their diagnoses and employment experiences with me, I’ve talked to employers who wanted to know how they could provide support, and I’ve talked to people who wanted to help their coworkers that may be struggling with mental health. It’s all these conversations that made me want to continue helping people better understand mental health in the workplace – by writing this book.

Specifically, in Part I, “Introduction to Mental Health in the Workplace,” I’ll talk more about my background, the difference between mental health and mental illness, and addressing misconceptions about mental health at work. In addition to being a person living with a serious mental illness and ongoing mental health struggles, I have worked in a wide variety of different types of jobs and industries. I grew up understanding the importance of a good work ethic but recognized later in life that I may not be able to perform like everyone else because of my mental health needs.

In Part II of this book, “Being on the Job with Mental Health Issues,” we get at the heart of the issue: how to handle working at a job if you have mental health issues. Should you tell your boss? What accommodations are required by law? How do you set boundaries? How do you recognize the signs of burning out? What does self-care look like during the 9-to-5 grind? I’ll answer all these questions and more, all while sharing what worked for me. I’ll also introduce you to others who have firsthand experience of the realities of being on the job with mental health issues.

In Part III, “Supporting Employees with Mental Health Issues,” I’ll talk about antiquated workplace policies that I hope you aren’t seeing at your job, as well as how employers can rebuild workplace culture into a modern reality. I’ll also talk about management and coworkers’ roles for people with mental health issues thriving while on the job. While speaking with employers about mental health in the workplace over the last several years, I have been able to see what has worked well to retain employees and also what some companies have done poorly that has caused incredibly high turnover rates. Some companies are leading the changes in workplace culture and seeing the positive result from investing in mental health resources; however, we still have a long way to go. I end the book with my hopes for the future and resources for where you can go from here.

Part IIntroduction to Mental Health in the Workplace

Chapter 1All About Me and My Diagnosis

I remember the embarrassment and humiliation I felt having to look my human resources manager in the eyes and explain to her that I had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. I also had to disclose that I had ongoing struggles with several other mental health issues, and I didn’t know what to expect. I had known for a while about my diagnosis, and I had not told my previous employers because I was afraid of being judged by my coworkers or discriminated against. I had been working at this company for a full year, and I also had not told any of my coworkers or my manager.

I knew that my coworkers suspected something, as I had overheard another employee say that he could tell that “something was wrong” with me. Although I was on medication that reduced my schizophrenia symptoms, I still had breakthrough symptoms like auditory and visual hallucinations and many unresolved mental health issues like depression and anxiety as a result of my diagnosis.

I was too afraid to talk about my mental health because I knew what people thought about individuals living with mental health issues. I lived in a small, rural community, and people often spoke very poorly about the very idea of mental health issues. They would say things like:

“I wouldn’t let my kid go to therapy. That’s not how our family deals with things.”

“Who cares if you are sad? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get over it!”

“People who need medication are just weak.”

I figured that I was doing just fine since I had managed to hold on to this job and that I just had more issues with stress and anxiety than most people. I figured that is what made it harder for me to function day to day. I was under the impression that my poor mental health was somehow my fault and that I just needed to work harder like everyone else. But every time I tried to ignore my mental health issues, I would end up in burnout, and that is how I had lost jobs in the past.

When I started having symptoms of mental illness, my coworkers and even my direct manager at my previous jobs would eventually notice that something wasn’t quite right with me, and it usually ended with me feeling forced out or being fired. I did tell some employers in job interviews that I had occasional mental health struggles that I was working through, but I would never get a call back. When I did manage to get jobs, some of my coworkers would find out about my struggles because no matter how hard I tried, I could not hide my mental health issues or mental illness forever.

I could pretend I was fine for a while and even do an amazing job and outperform my coworkers, but it always led to burnout, and it wasn’t sustainable. In this particular role – I was working as a distribution center operator at a food manufacturing company – I was struggling to perform and was having issues with attendance, so I knew that I would eventually have to tell human resources if I wanted to keep my job, but I was terrified to do it.

When I finally decided to have the conversation, my HR manager’s reaction to the news was not what I was expecting. She simply looked at me and said, “I am sorry to hear about your diagnosis and the status of your mental health. That must be incredibly difficult. Do you have any reasonable accommodations you need from us?” Then she started to fill me in about the company’s options for accommodations, resources, and assistance to ensure that I could continue to work there.

I couldn’t believe that she responded in a way that seemed so supportive and encouraging. She even told me about the company’s employee assistance program (EAP) and mental health resources and helped me apply for the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to ensure that I didn’t lose my job if I needed to miss days for appointments or take days off when I was struggling.

I know this may sound ridiculous, but I was expecting the HR folks to say that I couldn’t work there anymore. I had always been told that people with mental health issues or diagnosed mental illnesses were “crazy” and incapable of working or maintaining a normal lifestyle. I was so afraid of anyone knowing that I struggled with mental health issues that I drove myself to exhaustion just trying to hide it. I didn’t want to admit that I ever struggled with depression or symptoms like paranoia and hallucinations, especially to my employer.

Besides losing jobs because of not knowing how to discuss my mental health with employers, I was also discouraged to discuss my mental health because I had seen other people I knew lose jobs due to issues with mental health, including my own mother.

I was raised by a single mother who was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when I was in high school. She went from working three jobs to support her kids to being unemployed and on disability because her mental illness and her issues maintaining positive mental health made it impossible for her to keep a job no matter how hard she tried. She was always the hardest worker I knew, and suddenly she was struggling with such severe depression and psychosis that I had to become a full-time caregiver as a teenager. It was so confusing and devastating to watch the most driven and hardworking person I knew not be able to even get out of bed or bathe herself. My mother was my first introduction to what mental health and mental illness truly looked like.

When I developed schizophrenia symptoms in college, I figured that I would never be able to work again. I assumed that I would have to go on disability, like my mom. Despite wanting to work when I got stable on medication and wanting to have a better and more comfortable life, I figured that my condition and my constant mental health symptoms would make it impossible.

I had been convinced that it would be unlikely that I would ever get to a point of stability or cognitive function that would allow me to be anywhere near where I was before my psychotic break, especially after a doctor told me that due to the severity of my mental illness and my constant mental health afflictions that I should just plan on being unemployed because there was “no way” I would be able to get or hold a job. Yes, a doctor said that. And I believed it. Getting a mental-health diagnosis was already so confusing and scary, but being told I would be disabled for the rest of my life was devastating.

One of the reasons I believed that people with a similar illness as I have could never work or be successful was because all I had ever known about people with schizophrenia or mental illness is what I saw on TV shows, movies, and media, all of which portrayed people with mental illness in a very negative light. The only person I had ever met with a similar diagnosis was my mom, and due to many years without treatment, her symptoms manifested differently for her than mine did for me in my own experience.

Unfortunately, my mom went almost a decade undiagnosed (or with incorrect diagnoses) with no resources or medication, and it had irreversible cognitive effects. Although she is doing better now and has regained some cognitive function, I watched my mother struggle to survive as we couldn’t afford basic necessities with her being on disability. Both my siblings and I were forced to care for our mom at a young age as well as start working while still in high school to pay for basic necessities.

I knew my mom’s inability to work was out of her control, but I knew I wanted to work as an adult. Of course, I didn’t think I would have similar mental health issues in my adult life.

Years after my initial mental health episodes, I got somewhat stable from medication and treatment. The more stable I got, the more I felt the need to prove that I could not only work but thrive in both my personal and professional lives. I think that is why having to tell my employer about all of the mental health issues I was dealing with felt especially embarrassing at the time.

I know now that I had no reason to be embarrassed about my diagnosis or my various mental health troubles, nor should I have been ashamed of having to tell someone else, but having been raised in a small, rural town in the Midwest, where people were proud of job longevity and company loyalty, I wasn’t looking forward to having to quit my job or getting fired. From a very young age, I remember my grandfather constantly stressing the need for me to get a steady job and plan on staying there forever. He was a lifelong electrician and retired from the same company that he apprenticed with. In fact, he was another incredible hardworking person in my life; both my mom and my grandfather shaped my work ethic and were reasons why I pushed myself so hard when I reentered the workforce, usually working myself into burnout and worsening my mental health.

Still, my grandpa’s employment journey was common for many of the people I knew in my hometown. They found jobs and stayed there for life, regardless of how the company may have mistreated them or underpaid them or how the job may have led to stress that affected their mental health and life outside of work. These were the types of workplace cultures that were similar to the first jobs I had in production, manufacturing, retail, and the service industry, and it became obvious that these companies and organizations cared very little about addressing mental health or even acknowledging it.

Another issue with growing up and working in a small rural town was it made it difficult for me to understand how common mental health issues and mental illnesses really are. No one talked about mental health in my hometown or in my family. Even after my mom was diagnosed, many of my family members refused to acknowledge or address it. That is why when I did start having mental health issues, I felt like it was a moral failing or like it was somehow my fault. I felt so alone, and I just wanted to be like everyone else who was able to work 40 hours, take care of their families, and take care of their home lives, but there were days and weeks that I couldn’t even get out of bed or get through work each day, let alone worry about my responsibilities outside of work. I realized that if there was to be any chance of keeping my job, I needed to explain my situation to my employer, and that is why I brought it to my HR manager that day.

After telling the HR manager about my diagnosis, I was so impressed with how it was handled that I even had a conversation with my direct manager, as recommended by the HR manager. I was hesitant at first, but the HR manager explained that disclosing my mental health issues and my schizophrenia diagnosis to my manager may make it easier for me to ask for help during my shifts, to start pursuing workplace accommodations, or even to look for other roles in the company if my mental health issues made me unable to continue to perform my job responsibilities.

I had a decent working relationship with my direct manager, but once again, I couldn’t believe how reassuring the conversation was. He followed up with me to ensure that I knew what resources were available and to verify that HR had given me all information I needed. I found out years later that he knew about my struggles before I reached out, and he was just glad that I finally asked for help.

I felt so supported by this particular company and by its management, which I know from years of advocacy and working many jobs is not usually the case when people try to open up about their mental health or disclose a diagnosis with a manager. This job gave me the initial stability that I needed, and the support from management and human resources allowed me to stay with the company longer than I had ever been able to keep a job prior. This company not only acknowledged my mental health concerns but also accommodated me in every way they could. By taking my mental health and personal life into consideration, I felt safer and more comfortable, which allowed me to perform with more consistency, engagement, and excitement than ever before.

Unfortunately, I had plenty of other negative workplace experiences both before and after this story. I have also spoken with mental health advocates and patients all over the country who have expressed how rare positive workplace cultures are in most industries today. Most of the stories of mental health or mental illness in the workplace that I heard from advocates and peers were either addressed unprofessionally by leaders or ended negatively for the employee.

Most people are too afraid to have these conversations at work because they’ve either lost jobs or been treated differently after disclosing their mental health status, so they stopped reaching out for help the next time around. Being accommodated at work should be the norm! Everyone wants to be able to live comfortably, and having a good job can make that possible. However, keeping a “good job” can be very difficult when you are unable to function day to day due to severe anxiety, depression, or other mental health struggles. Although mental health awareness seems to be on the rise, conversations about mental health and mental illness in the context of the workplace still seem to be avoided. But ignoring it does not make the problems go away.

Mental health in the workplace is such an important topic because mental illness and mental health can affect anyone, at any time, without warning. In fact, I lived the first 18 years of my life without any symptoms or major mental health issues. If you had asked me, I would have considered myself “normal” for my entire adolescence. It wasn’t until my first year of college that I experienced my first symptoms of psychosis and had a psychotic break. I was 21 years old by the time I received my diagnosis of schizophrenia, which caused new mental health issues like increased stress, anxiety, and depression.

When I finally got stable with medication and tried to get back to working, it was difficult to get a job and almost impossible to hold one consistently with my constant mental health issues. I saw my mother have the same difficulties during my adolescence and into my adult life, and although I felt terrible for her, at the time I thought, That could never happen to me. That is when I learned that mental illness can affect anyone.

So, after being at that job in which the HR team was so accommodating longer than I had worked anywhere else, I was inspired to go back to college (having dropped out during my psychotic break several years prior) to pursue a degree in HR management; I wanted to make a difference in the HR field and be a vocal advocate for workers struggling with mental health or mental illness.

How Work Has Affected Employee Mental Health

According to a 2024 National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) poll,1 one in three employees say their mental health has suffered because of work in the past year. (This doesn’t include individuals who struggle with mental health issues that pertain to their home lives, just those who are finding their job directly having a negative effect on their mental health.)

This shows not only the need to address how work can affect mental health in a negative way but also why employers need to work hard to ensure that their employees don’t become part of this statistic. I have seen both personally and professionally how negative mental health can impact someone’s ability to perform, engage, and succeed with the work they do.

Mental health has become a trending topic ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, which is a great thing, but we need to make sure that conversations are focused on more than just hashtags. It is also important to make sure that mental illness continues to be a part of the conversation. Many people who have mental illness don’t recognize they have it until it has already had detrimental effects on their lives. Or, they may mistake mental illness for temporary mental health issues. Understanding the difference between the two can be an important part of understanding the needs of workers and how employers can be more prepared to help employees find proper resources. We’ll talk about the difference between the two in the next chapter.

Note

1

https://www.nami.org/support-education/publications-reports/survey-reports/the-2024-nami-workplace-mental-health-poll