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the soke mental wellbeing design
79 Plays4 years ago
In episode 27 with Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya from The Soke in London, UK we discuss the cultural differences between the UK and the US in openness around mental wellbeing; the impact of Covid on our relationships at home and in the office; mental health champions in the workplace; why having an off-site venue for discussions around mental health is preferable to an in-office solution; designing an interior for mental wellbeing; the parallels between boutique gyms and private clinics in terms of aspirational positioning and how working on your inner game can make you a more effective manager.
GUEST / DR. CHI-CHI OBUAYA OF THE SOKE, LONDON, UK
- https://www.thesoke.uk/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-soke/
- https://twitter.com/TheSokeUK
- https://www.instagram.com/thesokelondon/
HOST / MATT MORLEY
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Transcript
Introduction to Wellbeing in Real Estate
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to episode 27 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we discuss wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality today. I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of Biofilico Wellbeing Interiors and Biofit Health and Fitness. Today, I'm with Dr. Chichi Obuaya, Head of the Clinical Board for the SOC, S-O-K-E, in London.
00:00:37
Speaker
a private mental health clinic that has arguably redefined this concept for an upmarket clientele in the post-COVID era. We
Cultural Differences in Mental Health
00:00:45
Speaker
discussed the cultural differences between UK and US in openness around mental wellbeing, the impact of COVID on our relationships at home and in the office, mental health champions in the workplace, why having an offsite venue for discussions around mental health is preferable to any kind of in-house solution,
00:01:05
Speaker
designing an interior space for mental wellbeing, the parallels with boutique gyms and private clinics in terms of newly aspirational positioning, and at the end, how working on your inner game can make you a far more effective manager through the wonderful gift of empathy.
00:01:26
Speaker
If you like this type of content, please hit subscribe. My contact details are in the show notes, as are those for The Soak, obviously. So here we go.
Dr. Obuaya's Role at The Soak
00:01:35
Speaker
Here's Dr. Chichi Obuaya in London. Dr. Chichi, welcome to the show. Pleasure to have you here. I'd really like to dig into your role as head of the clinical board for The Soak. Just talk to us a bit about what that sense has involved so far and how you see it evolving over time.
00:01:54
Speaker
Really excited to be here, Matt. Good to see you again as well after all these years. And I'm a consultant psychiatrist. So I trained as a medical doctor, specialized in psychiatry, and I'm an adult psychiatrist. So I see anyone aged 18 and above with a range of mental health difficulties, including depression, anxiety, problems related to birth, trauma related issues.
00:02:22
Speaker
some people who've had difficulties with addictions. I'm the clinical lead at the Soak, and the Soak is a behavioral health center in the heart of London. We're coming up to our one-year anniversary. And the whole premise of setting up the Soak was really that within the UK, there are plenty of mental health professionals that people can see, but we found that there's still massive stigma around mental health.
00:02:51
Speaker
and accessing care and we just wanted to ease that process for people by having a really high quality service that has a beautiful environment and really encourages people to come forward and supports that by offering them very good quality care in an environment that is conducive to promoting good mental wellbeing.
00:03:18
Speaker
I think that really comes across in terms of the space that you've created and clearly that's one of the key attributes. We'll loop back round onto that, but in terms of how you
00:03:30
Speaker
the mix then of resources on the team and the range of services that you offer. Presumably you each have specialisms, but then there seems to be this interesting sort of client service director role that might be perhaps not applicable, that's not common in every clinic. So how do you structure the team and how do you sort of allocate the specific specialists to a client as they come in? Just talk us through that process.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yes,
Multidisciplinary Model at The Soak
00:03:57
Speaker
so our clinical model is a multidisciplinary one. I think we recognize that in private practice, you can certainly access a whole range of therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists. It can be quite difficult for people to navigate through the system and to really understand who they need to see and what skill set that person needs to have.
00:04:20
Speaker
So most of us have a pretty broad range of people we would see with a vast range of conditions. But within that, there are areas of interest. So for me, I still work within the national health system, and I see people with ADHD, so attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We have therapists who
00:04:46
Speaker
have a particular interest in supporting people who have, for example, body image issues, who might have disordered eating, but maybe aren't quite meeting the threshold for a full eating disorder diagnosis. And I'd say generally one of the themes is that we're trying to be quite proactive and preventative. So a lot of healthcare services are set up to treat illness.
00:05:12
Speaker
And that that lends itself to seeing people when they're really unwell. And there's certainly a role for that. But we're trying not to offer that acute care, but to catch people before they fall into major difficulties.
Proactive Mental Health Approaches
00:05:26
Speaker
We have a broad range of child, adolescent and family services. So working with couples, working with parents who may have a child that's going through difficulties in their mental health. And we work right across the age span. So really from
00:05:42
Speaker
from birth right through to old age. So the multidisciplinary model is key in that we meet on a daily basis as a team, discuss potential referrals, discuss clients who might be seeing a range of us within the team. And it's then bringing our different bits of expertise together to think about how we can holistically support people. As I said, we're just coming up to our anniversary.
00:06:11
Speaker
So there's still plenty of room for growth and we want to be able to offer a range of services. So thinking about nutritional advice, there are a vast array of therapies. So we're really at the starting point and we want to add to the clinical team there. But you did mention the client services role. So our client services manager is really that, that glue, the go-to person.
00:06:39
Speaker
um, that can help people to navigate through the team because it can be quite daunting for people. And
Navigating Mental Health Services
00:06:45
Speaker
the reality is that when people are seeing therapists, they sometimes don't know how to benchmark that, uh, and to get a sense of what progress they're making. So, uh, we're data driven. Uh, we have outcome measures that we explore and we try to be very goal oriented.
00:07:05
Speaker
But the client services manager is the person that can think about some of the services we maybe don't provide, but can signpost people externally for that. And where there are challenges, where people do feel stuck therapeasically, which happens, it's not a sign of the therapy being of a poor standard. It just happens that sometimes you don't have the right fit with an individual therapist. That person can be the go-to to
00:07:32
Speaker
just explore what's going on and why the fit maybe isn't quite right and whether there are alternative options either within the soap or elsewhere for that person. So we really try to think holistically, systemically, so working very much with families. And I think the multidisciplinary aspect is something that has often been missing within private healthcare.
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah, that really resonates with me having been through a period of
Cultural Acceptance of Mental Health
00:08:03
Speaker
about six months of therapy myself during the whole COVID and lockdown and just feeling that it was very much I was effectively operating in a complete bubble. There was no third party sort of bounce ideas off or to sense check how something was going. So what you've just described having another person sort of not in the room but just outside the room for when you need to
00:08:25
Speaker
So look, is that normal or should, do you think there's, is that fit not quite right? That would have been so helpful.
00:08:32
Speaker
And of course, having a beautiful space in which to physically connect with someone in person rather than online. And you've alluded to something earlier, just the idea that it's perhaps prevention rather than cure. And I wondered how you feel as a Londoner if there is a change that's already happened or it's happening around
00:08:56
Speaker
acceptability at discussion around mental health, the idea of not waiting too long before you pick up the phone or walk through your front doors, for example, when you feel like something's reached a point where it's arguably not too late, it's already become critical, but sort of, you know, in the US, we'd imagine as we understand sort of popular culture, certainly in places like New York, it's far more common that one should
00:09:19
Speaker
engage with these things almost on a sort of semi-regular basis, not just for six months, but perhaps sort of semi-permanently. Just wondering how you see culturally where London's at in terms of this dialogue now around mental health. It's a great question. We're on the journey. We're certainly not at the level of the US in terms of it just being really ingrained in the culture and something that wouldn't make you bat an eyelid if
00:09:45
Speaker
you and I were having a conversation and you said, oh, just come from my therapy session. That would just be a perfectly normal thing. The UK is still quite conservative and we might feel a bit awkward if somebody said that in the middle of a conversation. We are getting there. There have been massive public mental health campaigns trying to destigmatize mental health both within society and I think particularly within the workplace.
00:10:14
Speaker
I would say that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to have these conversations because guess what? It's affected people in every way you can imagine. And I think it's made the language of mental health difficulties much more accessible to people because they can understand when you start talking about grief, for example, which in British culture we're not great at doing, people can understand it because it's actually affecting people
00:10:44
Speaker
directly or people that they know, given what's happening. And work has been disrupted for a lot of people. People have lost jobs. They've been put on furlough schemes. They felt that their jobs are under threat. They've been working from home and that's caused stress. They've been working from home and trying to homeschool children. And that's difficult. So I think the conditions are ripe for that conversation to move forward. It is moving forward. I'd still say it's a little bit
00:11:13
Speaker
too much towards the reactive end, i.e. when people are experiencing difficulties, that's when they're accessing help. And our vision is that we'd like to support people who kind of think, you know what, I don't see anything wrong with just having some exploratory therapy just to take stock of things, even if there isn't externally what we might regard as a major issue.
00:11:41
Speaker
And I think that's where people are in the state. So I think we'll get there, but it's going to be a process. You mentioned the impact of what's happened over the last year and a half on
00:11:54
Speaker
mental health in the workplace and the impact on corporates, larger businesses, and how, for example, HR teams are going to have to, you didn't allude to that, but I'm inferring from that, that there is clearly a need or an increasing need now for there to be a wider conversation in the office. And I know that's an element of, perhaps not your core business, but there is an element of that, of the SOC.
Engaging Businesses on Mental Health
00:12:18
Speaker
So how do you, as a company or yourself personally, how are you engaging with
00:12:22
Speaker
the, let's say the business end of mental health, because it does feel like that suddenly become such a sort of critical piece now within our overall well-being and that how we adjust both to going back to work, back to the office, but also how we keep that dialogue open. And I'm just wondering how an outside organization such as yours can help with that for a business. How does that, what does that look like?
00:12:52
Speaker
There's no one size fits all solution. I think that's the key thing to understand and you use the word conversation. I think the key aspect is to be a part of that conversation and see where the conversation goes. The reason I say that is that different sectors, different businesses within those sectors are at very different points in terms of their recognition of the scale of the problem when it comes to mental health challenges.
00:13:19
Speaker
and also what they really want to do about those problems. So to give an example, I would say that at the end of the scale that is what I would say just dipping one's toe into the water, there are lots of mental health campaigns now across the calendar. We have Mental Health Awareness Week, which is often a focus for businesses.
00:13:46
Speaker
And those businesses may get in external speakers and we've been part of those conversations. I think with any of these initiatives across a range of issues around social injustice and lots of challenges around the workplace, that really is the start and it isn't enough on its own. Because all that really does is it raises awareness and it gets people thinking. And ultimately businesses need to decide what's best for them.
00:14:15
Speaker
But we try to support that process. And at the other end of the scale, we've had really good engagement with companies that massively want to change their culture. And that could look like having mental health, first aid training, having champions across the organization, having a culture of supervision, which creates opportunities for conversations amongst peers, amongst colleagues,
00:14:45
Speaker
through which discussions around mental health, again, can just naturally flow. So those are some of the workshops that we offer to corporates. And it really just depends on how much time, effort, and resource they want to invest in that. One of the really interesting things has been to just observe from the outside what different corporates do.
00:15:10
Speaker
And I'd say that things have moved in a healthy direction over the last sort of five to 10 years. One of the things I would say is that a lot of corporates felt that the right solution was to bring a lot of these services in the house. So they think about wellbeing and it does require a broad wellbeing strategy, but that might include offering GP services or psychological therapy services in the house.
00:15:40
Speaker
We've been very explicit that we sit outside of organizations, so we like to work with them, but we have a fantastic space here. And what we find is that there can be reticence from employees about accessing services in-house. Among senior leaders, they see it as too much of a reputational risk. And amongst more junior colleagues, there's often a culture of competitiveness, and they find that
00:16:07
Speaker
they're worried about their job security if they're accessing the mental health suite on floor X within the building. So often these initiatives are well-meaning, but they don't really quite cut it in terms of people really accessing them. And often people will, even in very well-resourced organizations,
00:16:31
Speaker
seek external help because they're more comfortable with that. So we want to get to the stage where businesses really understand that and they're able to engage with us in that fashion because often the employees want to do that and we're positioned more where maybe close to where people live and it might be convenient for them to access
00:16:57
Speaker
us in this increasingly fluid working environment people have at a time that suits them in an environment where they're more relaxed and we've put in some features to really bolster the client's experience and that's probably going to work better for them, we feel.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, I'm with you. You mentioned the mental health officer role and it's come up on my radar having done some work with a real estate developer in London on their ESG strategy, so environmental sustainable governance. And it's now
00:17:32
Speaker
Part of that remit, so if you have a pension fund putting money into a project and a real estate developer doing the work, they're now having to do an annual report on their ESG. And part
Mental Health in ESG Strategies
00:17:43
Speaker
of that, part of some of the credits at least, go towards how you look after your staff and part of that is having a mental health officer within the team and having some kind of an external resource. And I just thought that was an interesting combination because
00:17:57
Speaker
The role of the mental health officer is to identify a problem and get that person to, whether it's pick up the phone, send an email, but pass that person on to the experts. And I remember thinking that makes total sense, not trying to resolve something themselves, but having
00:18:12
Speaker
the right person on the end of the line and make and really just joining the dots so that that person feels comfortable in this case for example talking to you guys so i think that leads us then into the idea of having a space a physical space that is not the office but you might get there having been recommended via your corporate your employer
00:18:31
Speaker
you then rock up to the soak. And from what I've seen, that space just does not look like anything I've seen in terms of mental health clinics, private mental health clinics. You've really changed
00:18:44
Speaker
Not just the aesthetic, but I think on some level the game in terms of rewriting the rule books of what it should feel like and look like when you go for one of these sessions. So for those who haven't seen the website, can you just sort of describe the type of environment that you have there? I mean, there seems to be sort of Scandinavian influences. There's vintage furniture. I mean, it's like an interior design showroom as much as anything. It looks beautiful.
00:19:08
Speaker
Absolutely, I think you're spot on and that is all by design. I certainly wish to take absolutely no credit for it. My role is to focus on the clinical work, but our founder, Marion Medin, had a vision to not just talk about de-stigmatization, but to evidence that by normalizing this process. So we've talked about the fact that we want people to be able to access care in a way that really feels normal.
00:19:36
Speaker
But the problem she identified was that the environment, and we've got some of the best clinicians in the world in London. I
Designing Stigma-Free Environments
00:19:43
Speaker
think New York's up there, but London is about as good a place to practice, psychiatry, psychology, anywhere in the world. But if the environment just reinforces the fact that you feel unwell, if it makes you feel sick, if it reinforces that view that you're a quote unquote patient, then are we really helping people?
00:20:07
Speaker
And as you said, when you go around a lot of hospitals, which have fantastic clinicians, practitioners offering really high quality level of care, the environment just lags behind. And so we wanted something that really made people feel nourished and the design features, I think tick the boxes in that respect, but also to be aspirational.
00:20:34
Speaker
And Mariam also talked about her inspiration for that. So lots of people go to gyms now. We don't think anything of it. It's a pretty regular thing to do. And you just go maybe in your lunch break and you go back to work and it's not a big deal. But gyms have become a bigger part of our lives. When they first really launched, there was something very aspirational about them.
00:21:02
Speaker
And so the aesthetics support about view that you went to a gym and you just had that wow factor. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here. So you come into reception. It doesn't feel clinical. The safe is really comfortable. You feel relaxed. It's a bit like being in someone's living room and a nice one at that. And we have our clinical rooms. But one of the things about seeing a mental health practitioner in London is that
00:21:30
Speaker
We tend to be very busy, so you leave your session and then you're back out onto the main road and you get on with your day. But actually we wanted to make people feel that they weren't being kicked out of the building and they had that time to reflect and also just to not feel rushed, particularly when they're talking about some quite challenging issues.
00:21:54
Speaker
So one of the key features would be the pods that we have. And these are spaces next to the therapy rooms where you can just sit back very comfortably. You can read books. You can just have some time in a darkened room to reflect on your session. We have some evidence-based technology that supports people. One of these is AlphaStim.
00:22:21
Speaker
And that's a device that delivers a microcurrent to your earlobes. It's a small device. You put it on for anywhere between 20 and 60 minutes. And it has evidence for supporting people in improving their sleep and also in reducing anxiety levels. And it's going to be approved by NICE, the National Institute for
00:22:43
Speaker
care and excellence in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder. So we have those devices and it just means that it's a really broad, comfortable experience. It's
Systemic Mental Health Approaches
00:22:54
Speaker
also really important because we see a lot of young people and they have parents and so we're able to give something to the parents when they're hanging around, often quite anxious, they can use our pods.
00:23:08
Speaker
And I did say that we think very systemically. So that's thinking about the families of system. And we don't just talk the talk, we're able to do that by linking the building to the therapy directly.
00:23:25
Speaker
It reminds me of some work I did in the past around with a hospitality client and we were looking at the guest journey, so rather like a customer journey, identify this pain point where you're checking out of a hotel or resort and the holiday's over, your weekend's over and guess what? You get slapped with a bill and then you're sort of just spat out onto the street again. And we're like, well, how could we soften that? Because actually we'd rather sort of smooth the transition out into
00:23:53
Speaker
the real world again after this day. It seems that you've applied some of that same almost hospitality level thinking to, great, you've just been through a therapy session and you might be feeling a little vulnerable. You might not want to just go straight out into the hustle and bustle of London Street again. So creating that third space between the outside world and the therapy room and allowing someone just to
00:24:17
Speaker
Just to chill and to sort of smooth that transition across just seems, yeah, it's bang on and very innovative, I think. But also just going back to your example, it's about recognizing who the client is. And we've done some work around that as well. So yes, the environment, broadly speaking, allows people to have a really great experience.
00:24:42
Speaker
but we also need to understand who our customers are. And so we wanted an environment that had these soft features, but to say it very bluntly, one that isn't feminine per se, because we have a lot of male clients. We know that men are not great at talking, generally speaking. There's been a lot of work in the public domain around getting men to talk about their mental health difficulties. So they're a big target group in terms of
00:25:12
Speaker
this whole de-stigmatization process. And being in central London, we know that a lot of our male clients are gonna come from a corporate background. So we wanted to make sure the optics weren't suggesting that we were some sort of hippie or new age type service. So we wanted soft, but also very professional. And I think we strike the balance just right there.
00:25:41
Speaker
So if we then follow that thread a little further, what would you say are typically the, let's call them red flags, but the markers then for someone, the steps that happen before they pick up the phone or walk through your front door? What should we be looking out for? For example, someone in a corporate environment,
00:26:03
Speaker
Is it, if they're not getting a nudge from someone by their side, a family member, a colleague, what should we be looking out for in terms of cues that perhaps talking to someone and engaging with a therapist at this point is the right step and almost a necessary step? Typically, what are the main markers for that?
00:26:24
Speaker
I think it's important to recognize that there are a broad range of mental health conditions. And one of the traps we sometimes fall into as psychiatrists when we're asked this question, we think about the more severe end. So I do see people with really severe depression, people who've experienced significant trauma, even people who might have a psychotic illness.
00:26:50
Speaker
And we tend to go for that, but there's so much in the middle that we miss. And I think your question speaks to the person that might be undergoing significant stress over a period of time. It might be work-related, it may have nothing to do with work, and it could be very much to do with their personal circumstances. And so it's a lot more ill-defined, and we know that stress affects people in many different ways.
00:27:19
Speaker
But in keeping with the idea that we want to get people maybe before they present with us severe depression, I think it's understanding some of those themes around stress and how it manifests with people. So the sorts of concepts I'd want to get across would be pretty high level. And we might talk about people who are thriving. And it's just as it sounds. It's when you've got that spring in your step.
00:27:46
Speaker
you're very outward focused, you feel energetic, you're paying pretty good attention broadly speaking to exercise, your nutrition, you're engaged with friends, family, colleagues, and you've got a, I don't like to talk so much about work-life balance, there are people who have very busy jobs, work long hours, but you're paying attention to the things that give you replenishment, a sense of energy and enjoyment.
00:28:17
Speaker
I think particularly in the current context, burnout is one of the key aspects people need to be looking out for. And that builds up over a period of time where there's that loss of attention to the things that give one a sense of rejuvenation and replenishment. And at the other end of the spectrum, we might think about this concept of languishing and it's just as it sounds, you know, the energy levels are down.
00:28:45
Speaker
You start to become a bit withdrawn from colleagues. You're just not quite on top of things at work. And one experiences significant stress. And one of the things we're mindful of is that people can experience this cliff edge experience where they're functioning outwardly for a period of time. But where stress is building up, it can hit you very quickly. And the cliff edge term comes from the fact that
00:29:15
Speaker
you can very quickly go from outwardly functioning to really not functioning very well at all. And that can have significant implications within the workplace, but of course beyond that as well. Do you think there's interesting discussions around performance in the workplace? So how perhaps someone sort of in the C-suite or an executive in a large corporation
00:29:44
Speaker
And the idea of rather like an athlete having a coach, there might be one for their strength and conditioning coach, they might have another one who's their mental coach. If we assume that a high performing executive, or indeed anyone, any professional who's trying to be at the top of their game,
00:30:02
Speaker
Do you think there's a case to argue for there being someone on that team once we open up to the idea of having a bit more than just a personal trainer, but perhaps someone, whether it's a life coach, that there should be or potentially there could be someone on that advisory board who's, if you like, looking after the mental health side, even if there are no clear markers that there's something wrong? Or do you think it's... Is it a case of waiting until something goes wrong in a sense?
00:30:33
Speaker
Certainly not waiting until something goes wrong. And I'm biased, so you may guess that my answer is going to be yes, it would be a great idea. There is a but. I think it's really important, and we've thought about this as an organization, to be very clear about what the role of that individual or team would actually be. And there are psychologists who work in corporate organizations and may be termed sort of performance coaches or psychologists.
00:31:03
Speaker
We've been quite careful to be clear about what our perceived role is and that's why I said there are different conversations with different corporate clients. What we don't see our role in doing is saying we're gonna come in and by engaging with our intervention, you impact the bottom line. If that happens as a result of
00:31:29
Speaker
Optimizing employees' well-being, reducing sickness rates, people being happy at work. Of course we want that, and that's amazing. But that's not a direct goal. And I think if I use the analogy of a sports person, and there have been a lot of sports people coming forward, people who've
00:31:51
Speaker
played at elite level, global superstars, who talk about the fact that everything was geared towards winning and performance.
Wellbeing in Sports and Corporates
00:32:00
Speaker
And it wasn't actually looking at them as individuals. And there could be a lot of resentment that sets in for people who outwardly appear to have these amazing lives living the dream. And it's far from that. And I think that's relevant to the workplace as well. So
00:32:17
Speaker
We're not here to just help the organization. We actually want to focus on the individual. So in the same way with an elite athlete, you want to look at them holistically and say, how do we support this person not to run faster or to put in more minutes in whatever team sport they're in, but to really focus on their wellbeing. That will, of course, have the direct knock on effect that they will be able to
00:32:45
Speaker
focus on the challenge that they have, be it in the sporting arena or in the workplace. So yes, we want to engage in those conversations, but we want to do it with real clarity about what we're actually trying to achieve. And I think businesses need to wake up to that aspect. And it sounds a bit counterintuitive, but actually, I think this is the way forward.
Empathy and Management Skills
00:33:12
Speaker
Certainly from my personal experience, doing this work, it became very much complementary to my meditation practice, a mindfulness meditation, which by itself was getting me somewhere, but I felt perhaps not getting me where I wanted to be. Combining the two with some therapy and the meditation practice was just this magic formula. I think the point I'd ask people to consider is just
00:33:40
Speaker
By loving ourselves, we're able to give more love out to the world. And if you're managing people in an organization, if you're managing a team of 10, 20, however many people there may be, empathy. And so much of that can come from being able to love and respect yourself first and knowing what your own triggers are, recognizing where they are and why you react or why you struggle to get into someone's head or why a particular person rubs you up the wrong way. When you're managing, that's a real problem because they're on your team. And somehow you have to
00:34:10
Speaker
You have to handle them every day and get the best out of them and look after them. And it's not about friendship. It's a professional relationship. But still, I think this type of work that we do on ourselves
00:34:22
Speaker
has so much benefit, not just for us, the individual, but for those around us. And I think, for me, that was almost this unexpected benefit, a sort of a knock-on effect that I was just felt able to connect more easily and in a more honest way with those around me, and particularly people I was managing. And that doesn't get, that's not part of the sales pitch. It was just a very clear, tangible result of having done this work on myself, and it was completely unexpected.
00:34:50
Speaker
But that's exactly the point. You've articulated it so well. That's the point I was alluding to when I said at the starter level, it's get a speaker in to give a half hour talk for Mental Health Awareness Week. What
Driving Cultural Change with Empathy
00:35:03
Speaker
you described actually enables cultural change, but it requires a conversation. We don't just have an off the shelf package for organizations, but what you have articulated there is where we want to get to
00:35:19
Speaker
with organizations, but we fully understand that it requires leadership. It requires a bit of knowledge about the mental health landscape, what different providers can offer, and where you want to get to as an organization. But that absolutely is on the money in terms of where we want to go. And in our workshops, that is what we try to do.
00:35:47
Speaker
We go through that journey with people in understanding a bit about their own mental wellbeing and the key word is empathy there and just being able to understand what's going on for other people. But yes, the journey starts from within. Absolutely spot on. I'm with you. I think we should end on that sentiment because it just feels, it feels like a mug drop moment. So listen, Dr. Chi Chi away. Thank you so much for your time. It's been great. We'll link to
00:36:17
Speaker
the SERC website and to your profile on the episode notes. Thanks again. It's been great. Real pleasure. Thank you, Matt.