A few months ago, I was having a really tough time. I found myself waking up in the morning feeling sick, dreading the day ahead. Regardless of the kind faces around me at work, I was afraid of being seen as a liability. Or at least that’s what I thought would happen if I was honest about how I was feeling. I felt obligated to paint a mask on every morning that wouldn’t take a ridiculously expensive setting spray to keep in place. I didn’t want to be seen differently, or treated differently just because of my mental health. I thought, my mental health isn’t an appropriate topic for the workplace, right?

Wrong.

Mental ill health is the leading cause of sickness absence in the UK, meaning that the workplace is exactly where talking about mental health should be appropriate. There is so much stigma attached to mental illness that we forget that it’s exactly that, illness – and should be treated as you would do any other, regardless of its visibility.

1 in 6 British workers are affected by mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression every year. Take a look around you. At how many people are in the same room as you, even at how many people are sat around the same desks? This highlights that mental illness doesn’t make you unable to work, it just means we need to take action to create the right environment to let these people work. This irrefutable issue is exactly why it is imperative that mental health stigmas are