The University of Lincoln has joined employers across the city in signing a pledge tackling mental health discrimination.
The ‘Time to Change’ employer pledge aims to challenge the stigma of mental health in the workplace- with Stagecoach East Midlands and Lincolnshire Police being among employers who are already signed up to the pledge.
The University of Lincoln’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Mary Stuart, signed the pledge along with the University’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, Julian Free, on World Mental Health Day.
Professor Stuart told The Linc that although aimed at employees, the pledge would have an impact on students as well.
She said: “What you do with the staff of the university will have a knock-on impact in terms of how those staff perceive students who might have challenges around mental health.
“The age group that we tend to have at a university is the age group where people might suddenly find themselves with a particular condition so if we are very conscious of that as a staff pledge, that will mean people will be sensitised to it and will be able to provide the support that students need.”
Figures from ‘Time to Change’ show that a quarter of British workers are affected by conditions such as depression or anxiety- with mental health being the leading cause of sickness absence in the UK, costing the average employee £1,035 a year.
It comes as the University of Lincoln Students’ Union (SU) installed a brick wall outside the library to represent the stigma around the topic of mental health in their ‘Break the Wall’ campaign.
But Postgraduate Research Officer at the SU, Bradley Allsop, says that the university needs to go ‘further’.
He said: “Mental health awareness is brilliant, we need to have those conversations, we need to make sure people know where they can go to talk to people… so I love the idea of all that.
“But it’s frustrating because we could do more, it’s all well and good the university signing up to various things but it needs to look at what conditions it creates.”
However, Professor Stuart said that there would be some practical changes in regards to mental health.
She said: “We have decided to instigate a programme of activities that we know support people who have mental health conditions.
“Things like mindfulness, things like meditation, yoga, those kinds of things so we’re not just medicalising the issue of mental health but also giving people the power to take some control themselves around what they’re doing.
“We will be making sure to ask people who have particular conditions if it would be helpful for us to make sure that managers enable them to have more flexible working, so that they can manage their condition more effectively and don’t have to find themselves in a situation where they have to give up work.”
More information on the employer pledge can be found by visiting the ‘Time to Change’ website.