Its important to discuss about mental wellbeing

With the sad suicide news of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, two prominent and well established professionals and public figures it puts the focus towards the need to focus on mental wellbeing.

Its a topic that’s kept a strange distance due to fear of rejection from friends, family and employers if revealed. Though, its impact is life altering, things are moving slowly but steadily towards increasing awareness and conversations in the public domain. The problem with this topic is, that there are no direct external visible scars, its all hidden away in the mind, in this case being readable by some technological breakthrough especially would have helped.

Media coverage has been exhaustive, but here’s the thing it would be so much nicer as well to hear about the stories on people who dropped the idea of suicide and how or who helped them do it.

Most large corporates including CapGemini run a mental wellness program, that supports employees to reach out to counselors and have someone to talk to 24/7. I would encourage more engaging and frequent conversations on this topic to be had by leaders in HR as well as business leaders. Alternative ways of finding some solutions have also emerged, there is an interesting experiment being done by some folks using technology and art to help people find expression. Such programs though need stronger voices from colleagues, to help those in need get help on time.