The theme of this year’s Mental Health Week is “Healing through Compassion.” Through the week, we encourage you to practice compassion by not only acknowledging suffering but actively demonstrating care and kindness. Compassion can start within yourself and expand to those around you, reaching as far as everyone in Canada.
The mental health impacts of compassion
It has been called the secret to well-being. It’s considered one of the most powerful agents for health. It releases the “love hormone” into our blood, giving us a rush of pleasure.
What is it? It might surprise you that the answer is compassion.
Compassion is the strong emotion that moves us to take action to reduce suffering. The Dalai Lama, an expert on compassion, defines it as “a sensitivity to suffering in self and others, with a commitment to try and alleviate and prevent it.”
Although the philosophy of compassion dates from ancient times, interest in investigation compassion has surged in the last fifteen years. This is in part thanks to the mental health benefits it offers. Compelling scientific evidence suggests that giving compassion, receiving compassion, and allowing ourselves to experience self-compassion are all very beneficial to our mental health.
Creating compassionate workplace cultures
Compassion is the strong emotion that moves us to take action to reduce suffering. In recent years, the need to extend compassion to the workplace is rapidly increasing. In face, a recent study found that 71% of Canadian employees reported that their mental health impacted their ability to work. Plus, research found that compassion has been linked to higher job satisfaction, loyalty and trust in the organization, higher retention rates, and improvements in performance and motivation.
In the workplace, we can offer compassion to ourselves and to our coworkers. When we do this, we increase connections and improve relationships, promote positive emotions, and reduce job-related stress and anxiety.
CMHA National has a suite of solutions developed by our in-house experts to help organizations build a more psychologically safe workplace and equip employees with the practical skills to improve their own well-being.
Information from CMHA website. Head there for more details on and toolkits for mental health week! https://cmha.ca/event/cmha-mental-health-week/