INTHEBLACK October 2021 - Magazine - Page 25
AT A G L A N C E
The pandemic has drawn
focus on the importance
of mental health first aid
as an integral part of
an organisation’s
commitment to good
mental health.
Mental health first aid
involves the early
response to a client or
employee struggling with
mental health problems.
It is often easy to miss
the first signs of a
problem, especially
in a remote working
environment, and mental
health first aid training
helps business advisers
and leaders recognise
these signs early.
STORY SUSAN MULDOWNEY
T
wo years ago, in the middle of the night,
Bernadette Smith FCPA was woken by a
phone call. On the other end of the line
was a deeply distressed client.
“He told me he wanted to commit
suicide,” says Smith, a director of Perth-based public
practice Aspen Corporate. “When you get a call like
that at 3am, it’s terrifying, and you don’t know if you’ve
said the right thing. We’re trained as accountants to
help people, but it can be hard to know where to draw
the line. Where does your role stop?”
As trusted advisers, accountants like Smith are
exposed to much more than their clients’ financials.
The anxiety triggered by divorce, elder abuse, family
friction or business failure, for instance, is often
brought along to business meetings.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,
however, many public practitioners have witnessed a
significant rise in both their small and medium-sized
enterprise (SME) clients and their own employees
struggling with their mental health. As a result, the
industry came together to develop mental health “first
aid” training.
A GROWING STRUGGLE
Well before the pandemic, mental illness was the
single biggest cause of disability in Australia.
Data from mental health research body Black
Dog Institute shows that one in five Australians will
experience some symptoms of mental illness in any
given year. About 60 per cent of them won’t seek help.
The pandemic has added an additional layer of mental
ill health due to social isolation, job loss, business
strain, fear and uncertainty.
In Singapore, where approximately one in seven
people report experiencing a mental health challenge
in their lifetime, suicide prevention organisation
Samaritans of Singapore received more than 39,000
calls for help in 2020 alone. That represents an 18 per
cent increase from the year before.
It’s a similar case in Malaysia. Between March 2020
and May this year, just over 85 per cent of distress call
statistics received by Malaysian Government agencies
were related to mental health.
“When the pandemic hit, we could see signs of
mental health strain everywhere,” says Smith. “We had
staff members who were really struggling.
“Accountants have witnessed some pretty significant
mental health challenges in their clients well before
COVID-19, but we just haven’t really had any formal
training to help with it.”
TRAINING YOU CAN COUNT ON
The situation looks set to change with the recent
launch of Counting on U, a workplace mental health
first aid and relationship-building program that
provides training to business advisers to better support
the needs of SME owners.
Smith was one of the first to sign up to the program,
which is funded through the federal government’s
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