The NH Adjutant General, Maj. Gen. David Mikolaities welcomed professionals from businesses recognized as NH Veteran-Friendly at the Annual NH Veteran-Friendly Business Symposium in November. (Courtesy of NAMI NH)
A person in the United States spends about 115,880 hours of their life working. This number, however memorable, is also impersonal. They are a reminder of how much time we may spend with colleagues without truly knowing their inner lives.
Often, it’s not until someone has a crisis or an accident at work that people see what that person is going through. One reason for this has to do with stigma surrounding mental illness and a culture that continues—despite some progress—to emphasize shame and endurance over openness and vulnerability.
Work shapes our health, wealth and well-being and at its best has the potential to bring autonomy and meaning to our lives, as well as more productivity for businesses. On the other hand, not everyone whistles while they work.
More than a third of Americans are showing signs of clinical anxiety and depression, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released in late May 2022. With more workers reporting mental health challenges, workplace well-being is receiving an increased focus from mental health and public health professionals across the country.
The U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being Report in 2022 states that workplace mental health is a critical public health priority. According to a Mind Share Partners 2021 Mental Health at Work Report, 76% of U.S. workers reported at least one symptom of a mental health condition, 84% said their workplace conditions contributed to at least one mental health challenge and 81% of workers reported they will be looking for workplaces that support mental health in the future.
Amy Cook, suicide prevention project manager at NAMI NH and chair of the Suicide Prevention Council’s Military and Veterans Committee, says workplace health and mental health go hand in hand. “Something that I learned years ago was that the typical adult in the United States spends about a third of their life at work,” she says, adding that companies like Dead River Company, a home-heating company based in Maine with locations throughout NH, understand that their employees bring personal mental health challenges to work and are invested in making sure their needs don’t go unnoticed.
Jason Grower, regional director of operations for Dead River Company, says from a personal and a mental health perspective, the company’s concern for well-being and destigmatizing mental health challenges helps to keep the focus on the safety of its employees and reduces risk. “We don’t have a formal [mental health] program but, from a leadership development capacity, we train our leaders, we remind them that when we talk with people we are only seeing a small fraction of their lives. There’s a lot more going on behind scenes and below the surface,” he says. “We have a consistent emphasis on the whole person.”
Destigmatizing Mental Illness
New Hampshire native Kim LaMontagne began her journey toward well-being—and a career change now focused on destigmatizing mental illness and helping companies create healthy workplace cultures—after years of living in silence. It was only after getting help for her anxiety, depression and substance use that she was able to understand what was happening, she says. Earlier in her career, LaMontagne was a successful corporate executive for a global company in NH where she performed at a high level each day until she could no longer conceal the pain—which she did for years— leading her to suicidal thoughts.
“I was in a lot of pain,” she says, explaining that after work each night she would consume five to eight glasses of wine followed by blackouts and hangovers. “And I got up every day, and I’d function as a wife, as a mother and as a top performing corporate executive. But I lived with so much shame because I felt like there was something wrong with me.” (See sidebar on page 34 for more of her personal story.)
LaMontagne, who now has her own company that trains corporate leaders and their staff on how to spot mental-health red flags and to create healthier workplaces, says she feared losing her high-paying job and being seen as weak or incompetent were she to come forward about her mental health challenges. So, she pushed through—as she says many do—functioning in silence. “There are a lot of people out there in every single industry operating in this fashion,” she says, explaining she knows this from her own experience as well as from the people she encounters in her work. “Every time I write an article, every time I do a training and share my story, people who are high performing, low performing, medium performing— doctors, attorneys, nurses, chief executives, nurse executives, people in construction—they come forward and they say, ‘oh my God, Kim, you were just speaking directly to me.’”
NAMI NH recently partnered with Comcast to provide their team members with four “In Our Own Voice” presentations that provide a personal perspective of mental health conditions, as leaders with lived experience talk openly about what it’s like to have a mental health condition. Through sponsoring these sessions, Comcast hopes to open the door to conversations about mental health and wellness, decrease stigma and discrimination, and provide their team with information and resources, NAMI stated recently.
Veteran Friendly Workplaces
The NH Veteran Friendly Business Network started in 2020 at the NH Department of Military Affairs and is focused on building stronger mental health networks. “The whole purpose was to reduce veteran suicide in New Hampshire,” Cook says, explaining that the veteran suicide rate in NH is 36%, higher than the national rate of 31% for veterans and significantly higher than the general population suicide rate both nationally (17%) and in NH (20%).
Cook says that veterans, who only make up 7% of the NH population, have the lowest unemployment rate as a group. “Work, we discovered, is one of the places we can reach veterans and their families,” she says.
Referrals Increase at NH Lawyers Assistance Program
Increasingly, high-stress work sectors are recognizing the need to provide mental health resources and encourage people to access them. For example, over the past year, there has been a 67% increase in referrals to the NH Lawyers Assistance Program (NHLAP), which helps lawyers, judges and law students who are experiencing mental health and substance use issues find the resources and help they need, says Director Jill O’Neil. She attributes some of this to shifts in awareness as well as an openness to address mental health in workplaces that has taken place because of the pandemic.
“It’s great that more people feel confident that they can call and email us for support,” O’Neil says, explaining that more people in NH’s legal community are beginning to understand the scope of help that’s out there. “Statistically speaking, there have been higher rates of anxiety and depression, but COVID has made people more comfortable talking about the impact of stress on mental health.”
O’Neil says that anxiety and depression are sometimes exacerbated by a person’s financial situation and that the rising cost of living can affect aging attorneys as well as newer attorneys facing financial debt. “We’re starting to see an aging population living on Social Security not able to afford rents,” she says. “Just recently, we received a call from a retired attorney who was facing eviction and seeking help.”
For attorneys across the country, the risk of depression, anxiety and substance misuse was already at hazardous levels according to a 2016 study in the Journal of Addiction Medicine, a risk that was exacerbated during the pandemic.
That study found 20.6% of attorneys experiencing problematic drinking and a significant number experiencing symptoms of depression (28%), anxiety (19%) and stress (23%). The study underscored the need for greater resources for lawyer assistance programs across the country as well as the expansion of attorney-specific prevention and treatment interventions.
Recovery Friendly Workplaces
The NH Governor’s Recovery Friendly Workplace initiative, administered by Granite United Way, serves as a “concierge of resources” that helps connect businesses, cities and towns with assistance, says Karen Morton-Clark, a recovery friendly adviser. Its slogan is “It’s time to reframe, not shame.”
Morton-Clark says the Recovery Friendly Workplace initiative offers training and open conversations where people are encouraged to share their lived experiences. “When you start sharing experiences, it opens the door for more conversations to happen,” she says.
The NH Governor’s Recovery Friendly Workplace initiative joined forces with the Dover Mental Health Alliance and SOS Recovery Center to support the City of Dover in raising a stigma-challenging flag for Recovery Month last September. (Courtesy of Recovery Friendly Workplace)
Program Director for NH Governor’s Recovery Friendly Workplace Samantha Lewandowski says they provide trainings on how to build these experiences into a company’s culture. She oversees four staff advisers who work with businesses one-on-one, and her organization also brings in subject matter experts such as O’Neil and others to help with trainings. Recovery Friendly Workplaces, she continues, also does trainings that highlight NH’s recovery resources. “We want to make sure all businesses have a general idea of what’s out there and that local partners are active in supporting businesses.”
Suzanne Weete, community education and engagement manager with Community Partners in Dover, has worked for the past three years to bring mental health education, stigma elimination and suicide prevention to Dover and surrounding towns. Weete is also a founding member and steering committee member of the Dover Mental Health Alliance that has worked with Recovery Friendly Workplaces to create Mental Health Friendly Workplace. She says much of the work was inspired by the recovery friendly model. “Mental health goes hand in hand with recovery work,” Weete says. Some of the work Weete does with companies involves a type of training called mental health first aid. “It’s like CPR and first aid for mental health, and it involves intense training,” she says, explaining that it teaches people how to recognize and respond to someone in emotional distress. Some of the risk factors include moodiness, anger, absence, poor self-care and other behavioral changes.
Weete points out that many companies have Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) but they are not widely used.
Creating Safe Spaces
There’s a business case to be made for shifting the culture in workplaces to become more focused on mental health challenges, and this starts with awareness, LaMontagne says.
Many people show up for work, but they aren’t really there, she says, explaining this phenomenon is called presenteeism. “When someone is absent from work, you’re not expecting any productivity out of that person. They’re off your radar because they’re absent that day,” she says. “But what about that person who is having an anxiety attack at work or is experiencing major depression or maybe their family members are going through something difficult?”
The most fulfilling thing about the work LaMontagne is doing, she says, is being able to share her story and creating safe spaces where people can understand that vulnerability changes lives. “I always remind people that this is a safe space for anyone to have a conversation. This is a safe space that’s completely judgment free. To see the look in people’s eyes when they understand that ‘there’s nothing wrong with me. I can heal.’ Those are the things that really makes this work fulfilling."
A Personal and Profound Encounter
The turning point in Kim LaMontagne’s life came on July 16, 2009, one of her lowest days. She was sitting in her car outside the Mall of NH in Manchester reflecting on a Fourth of July block party where she’d been intoxicated. She couldn’t get the words of her then-husband out of her head. “I woke up the following day in the same clothes that I had on from the night before, not remembering anything,” she says. Her husband told her she’d almost fallen into their fire pit.
“So, eleven days later, July 16, 2009, I made a call to Southern New Hampshire Internal Medicine in Derry not expecting to be seen that day; I had made the call, and I figured I’d go home and drink.”
To her surprise, this didn’t happen. By 5:15 pm, LaMontagne says she was in the doctor’s office speaking with a nurse practitioner. “I had a lot of support, and I made a commitment to stay sober.”
While that first step in 2009 was crucial toward recovery, it wasn’t until 2016, following years of depression, that an encounter with her boss changed her life in a simple, yet profound way. The company leader was in New Jersey and flew into Boston to meet after sensing something was wrong. “We did one sales call that morning, and the rest of the day we sat in a Starbucks. She asked what was happening, and I let it all out,” LaMontagne says. “She asked, ‘how have you been performing like this,’ and she told me to take some time off. She turned into a safe person who I could confide in; a judgment-free leader I needed her to be.”
In April 2020, during the height of the pandemic, LaMontagne, walked away from a six-figure salary to start her own company Kim LaMontagne LLC. LaMontagne now tours the country in a 40-foot RV, sharing a curriculum called the “Four Pillars of Creating a Mentally Healthy Workplace.”
The Four Pillars involves recognizing, sharing, changing and creating a culture of safety where people feel safe speaking openly about their mental health without fear of judgment, retribution or job loss.
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