Personal Blogs

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Positive and Negative Transfer Effects

In Psychology, there is something known as the ‘negative transfer effect’. Rudimentally, this means that given a problem to solve, there is a set of rules that someone has learnt, or internally adheres to in their general life, that may inhibit a successful solution being found, because those rules are so fixed in the individual that lateral thinking, or thinking outside the box, does not occur to them. To even think, ‘Ah ha! I need to think laterally here!’ would actually negate this ‘negative transfer effect’; but only if knowing that thinking outside the box might give an appropriate solution is a norm for an individual. Get it? Anyone who normally thinks outside the box is not already hindered. However, if wild and lateral thinking is the norm for an individual, following a linear series of steps to solve a problem can be difficult. Some people with a good understanding of mathematics struggle to pass a ‘Functional Maths’ Level Two exam. In case you don’t know what that is; it is approximately the level of a nine year old primary school child in the UK.

Someone I know has a nickname, slightly contemptuous, I suppose, for a work colleague, ‘word count’. I am told that ‘word count’ will use five words when one will do. I think that there may be an inherent mental health issue at play here. I think this chap is probably talking around a subject and landing on each facet of the topic, which to him, needs mentioning; quite simply because they are fascinating to him, or maybe they are just awkward stumbling blocks which need to be dismantled by spoken dissemination.

Someone with Macular Degeneration, a vision problem that affects how the central part of an image is perceived, sees only the periphery around a blind or blurred central spot. There may be blurred or no vision in the centre of their visual field. To have some understanding of what this may be like we might, ourselves, try to see in very low light conditions. We have cells in our eyes; rods and cones. The cones ‘see’ colour and are important to us during strong light conditions. The rods in the human eye are most sensitive to light but generally, are located in a ring around the cones; so a doughnut (Am. ‘donut’) shape. This means that often the best impression of something we want to see in low light conditions is gained by looking slightly to one side or above or below the object. In other words, you can’t look ‘at’ it. Human night-vision is also in black and white and devoid of colour.

The Secretarybird, found mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, is a predator, resembling an eagle on very long, stork-like legs; reaching up to 1.3 metres tall. It likes to eat snakes and small animals and hunts on the ground. It uses its sharp vision to find its prey by walking about a location and jerking its head about in different directions, seeking movement. It turns its head and focuses; turns its head and focuses, and then moves to a new spot; even returning to a rock or bush it had only just been to.

Now. Let us intermesh our limited understanding of how the person suffering with macular degeneration sees; what we see in the dark; and how the Secretarybird stares, focuses, and analyses each rock or bush; then moves on to the next. Let us also consider how my friend’s colleague ‘word-count’ communicates. Are they not the same? Each one of the entities used as examples for how vision is used have no choice in the application of their specific visual acuity, and word-count, much like a Secretarybird has great focus, but is compelled to examine each ‘rock’ before the whole landscape is understood or described. Perhaps, for ‘Word-count, the central image or focus is not available to him, and the shape of the concept is explained instead. It is also possible that that he is secretly in love with my acquantance and babbles, or he is teaching himself as he speaks, by assembling a construct of ideas.

Word-count’s passion and confusion aside, we might say that these entities have hard-wired systems. These hard-wired systems are far-removed from thought processes that result from experience because experience is mutable; it grows with each new experience; at least it should. The only resemblance is; experience could, disastrously, result in an heuristic, or rule of thumb, that is taken by the individual to be a hard-wired process of problem-solving. It is the past experience of an individual that generally determines how that individual approaches problem-solving. ‘Good at problem-solving’ on your CV doesn’t really mean anything, does it? It just means that you solved problems once upon a time, yet you may well have a fixed mind-set.

We can see how the negative transfer effect is demonstrated if, at a high street jewellers, the door from the high street opens differently to how high street shop doors normally open. There are videos on YouTube that show thieves giving up trying to escape a jewellers because they are trying to force the doors outwards, when they should have just gently pulled the unlocked doors inwards. Certainly, in England, we normally push the door to enter the shop and pull the door to leave the shop. When doors operate like this, a thief needs to spend more time to leave the shop with swag, because a full pelt run comes to a full stop in order to be able to pull on the door’s handle. That, however, is not the reason why our doors open like this; it is so pedestrians, passing the shop, don’t get hit in the face with an opening door.

Now we understand how a movement from one position, circumstance, or situation may smoothly transgress into, what may seem to the character in a story to be serendipitous, and a reader may just follow that rule of one state of being smoothly passing into another – the door opens inwards so the passage from outside to inside is barely slowed, or the transition from stranger to acqauintance is merely a few shared words of commonality. Withdrawing from an environment (or shop) or a situation, however, usually requires a pause if a threshold is actually crossed and the ‘door’ closed, before escape is fully achieved. An individual may create a pause in the movement of another character merely by saying, ‘One moment’, or ‘ Wait!’, or ‘I…’, or any other utterance, and then may say, ‘Never mind’, or shake their head once, left and right, as they, mirroring the movement, gently swat the air with a flat hand. This is akin to the pause before the door opens to leave the shop, environment, or circumstance. This would create a level of tension between people or characters in a story, especially if no other words, notably, went between them beforehand.

So far, we have looked at the positive transfer effect; in that all the action and interaction follows a standard format and one circumstance naturally flows into another. A child, without having fully formed a honed set of heuristics to use as a template to test the world, will not be at all surprised if one of the characters in a book, or an individual in their scope of perception, suddenly acts weirdly. One of the characters or individuals would only need to glance over their shoulder as they leave the presence of another, and an adult reader or viewer may infer that something is afoot; a child, however, may only understand that a character looked at another character or person. Fundamentally, there is no pause if two characters are in a open space and it is only distance that shall, or does, determine separation between these characters. So, a wide-open space with no hindrances that cause a delay in movement has only potential for a fading relationship between people. By fading, I mean there is an absence of finality. Typically, in films the viewer sees this as one person in a nascent romantic relationship running after the other as they tearfully leave town, never to return again. ‘Well, go get him!’ Of course, their relationship may instead continue to cook on the proverbial back-burner. One of these participants may even thwart a mutually attractive and symbiotic future relationship by fantasing a future and inadvertently using this fantasy as a false memory that is then egregiously considered, by them, to be a real experience. Just consider jealousy, for example. A pause, as the threshold of possible social interaction and improbable social interaction is actually crossed, creates a world of possibilities in a relationship between people, but there must be a clearly defined threshold.

A simplified scene of two people without embellishment or style:

‘Goodbye’.

‘Goodbye’.

Martin turned and began to walk away.

‘I…I..No’.

The distance between them grew.

Now the same scene without the pause.

‘Goodbye’.

‘Goodbye’.

Martin turned and began to walk away. The distance between them grew.

Positive and negative transfer is within the field of associative learning. For most of us, one set of problems were solved in a particular way, and that ‘way’ becomes for us our ‘way’ of doing things. My wife would call this her ‘inimicable style’. In an exclusively visual world, she would have been wearing an ‘L’ plate (from the ‘L’ that learner drivers place on their vehicles to designate their status as being inexperienced). But, in explaining experience, I am not seeking to portray a character’s style or personality in a story; I want to understand people’s fallibility; their inability to easily open the proverbial door; the fumble; the hesitation; not the covert look, but instead the unguarded and accidental look. Real people do not flow from one environment to another without a slip. There is an incongruity about them. From the two scenes above; we know that the Martin in the first scene is human because we have learnt that only humans talk and there is the expectation that it is Martin who turns and speaks; because that is our experience of how books are written; unless it is otherwise clearly stated, the last person mentioned is the owner of the next piece of speech. In the same scene above but without speech, the ‘distance’ could be attributed to the enlarging geographical space between Martin and the other character, or it could be an opening intangible chasm that serves to separate their future relationship. Yet, there may be a third character AND Martin might instead be a dog or other walking entity. Of course, it is implied that there are only two humans and no other entities; but that is only implication which works on our shared understanding of normal practice.

Here then, in the example above, is an example of the positive transfer effect being upset by a new perspective, which jolts our perception into an unconscious recognition of our fallibility to correctly understand a scenario. In effect, the possibility of not understanding the scope of the scene is an example of negative transfer – believing things happen this way and only this way, and we are later shown to be wrong or are given conflicting information.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t realise that our experience binds and circumscribes our understanding of a situation. Our perception is working fine, but it is compromised by our experience, and, in many cases, not by our complete lack of experience. Strangely, zero experience often trumps some experience; and a great deal of experience from different perspectives indubitably trumps only some experience. We might know this as: ‘ A little bit of knowledge is worse than none at all’. A little bit of knowledge, or experience, prevents us from approaching an operation with fresh eyes, and so a toolbox of unfettered, and uncluttered, set of possibilities is not available to us. Let us not forget, though, that all of us need to be shown how to do things; we cannot expect wolves to raise our children in the forest, and then expect the children to be able to use cutlery to feed themselves in a restaurant.

Positive and Negative Framing

This cognitive bias can be expressed in terms of stating information with a positive or negative slant; the result, nonetheless, being the same for either choosing one solution to a problem over another. Simply, and loosely: ‘This medicine saves 80% of the sufferers of a disease’, is positive framing. ‘This medicine cannot save 20% of the sufferers of a disease’, is negative framing. This, though, is a very simplistic approach is showing how describing something differently creates different expectations in the minds of recipients of information.

Let us delve into this a little more. In buying a second-hand motorcycle, a group of friends went separately to try to buy the motorcycle as cheaply as they could. The person in the group who was to be the owner of the motorbike went first to try it out. The advertised price was £200. The seller, was the father of the owner of the motorcycle. The father was not a fan of motorbikes. An offer of £170 was made with a determination that a good price to pay would be £180. The offer was refused. Next, a series of friends went and made lower offers; £120; £140; and £130; each of which were refused. Finally, the last friend went to view the motorbike and offered £170 again, with the authority to pay £180. The offer of £170 was accepted. Each of the lower offers served to positively frame the original offer. The same amount was accepted from the last friend because the seller’s expectaction was that only low offers would follow. This is positively framing.

It is possible; indeed, I heard this is true, that Vladamir Putin, at election times, similarly set up opposing political parties that faded into obscurity or had obvious failings, to positively frame his own political position.

In business, an unscrupulous entrepreneur may set up, perhaps, five businesses in the same industry; all of them viable. However, only one of these businesses is the true focus of the entrepreneur’s attention. If these five businesses take up five of the first page of Google listing and four of the websites offer a poor service; five competitors cannot occupy those slots on the first page and one of the websites out of the five will be more favourable than the other four ‘practically psuedo’ businesses. This could, by extension, be an example, if conducted well, of both negatively framing competitors’ businesses, while at the same time positively framing one of the five businesses operated by the unscrupulous entrepreneur. One might not be surprised to discover that Unilever owns around about two-thirds of the businesses that make the butter-like spreads in a UK supermarket fridge. The unscrupulous businessman with five businesses with five separate web pages on the first page of a Google listing is not at all dissimilar. The difference is, though, that the dastardly cad is attempting to use some of the webpages to negatively frame its competitors. You may well find, without too much scrutiny, evidence of such behaviour in modern marketing; it is, however, only a very recent slide into devilishly unfair tactics.

In marketing, there is something known as, ‘Collusive Bidding’. It is banned in the UK. Essentially, there would be a cartel of businesses who take it in turns to bid for a contract, much in the way of a ‘Dutch Auction’. One of the businesses in the cartel puts in a lower bid, still high but lower. Mostly, they get the contract. When a business in a cartel has a slack period of activity, that is the one which ‘gets’ the contract. Because, there are extremely heavy penalties for this type of activity, there is a strong compulsion for a competitor to report this nefarious activity.

A wily person can negatively frame other job interviewees by speaking in the negative, such as; ‘I don’t go home until the task is done’. This suggests that other people will leave work unfinished for their own selfish ends. This tactic used to work – except now, job interviewers want to establish that the potential employee will have a good work/life balance (It is good for the hiring business, due to it avoiding employee mental ill-health caused by too much work). Now, I suppose, one needs to exhibit robustness in job interviews. Ultimately, the interviewee, by default, frames their own application positively.

Bibliography

National Geographic, Secretarybirds,

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/secretary-bird

Accessed 03 February 2025

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology)

I am reading more often that people are puzzled by how easily they are scammed. Why are they confused? If you accept emails from businesses with your name on them, the probability, I suggest, is that you will eventually get scammed.

Surely, without thinking too hard, we can understand that the reason we want online banking and conduct many business activities online, including by email, texts and phone calls is because it is convenient. It means that we do not have to physically go to the post office (or shop) to buy a stamp and go to the post box to post a letter. 'Oh no! You cry. I want immediate gratification'. The truth is, most of us are addicted to dopamine. Anticipation releases chemicals in the brain that make us feel good. Send for a parcel and the anticipation is there. We don’t want it to wane so we pay for next day delivery (more than the price for a stamp and an envelope to order it by post). We wake up knowing that the order will be delivered. There it is! Now the anticipation peaks as we unwrap it and test the item in some way. How many emails did you get from the delivery company telling you the order is wherever it is, at different times of the day? Did you give your details to the delivery company? Of course not; the business you ordered the product from did. GDPR makes it clear that the information you supply for delivery purposes can only be used for delivery purposes. Guess what? Warehouses print your name and address on labels that they stick to packages. Your email address is NOT on the label. Did you agree to a third party knowing your email address ? No, you didn’t. Tacitly, you did, because you ordered from a business who routinely passes your details to third parties, and you did not make it clear to them not to. Your fault for letting them breach the GDPR by not complaining. Oh wait! We enjoy the text messages and emails; it heightens the anticipation. Only the most foolish of us actually believes that our email accounts have never been hacked. And, only the most foolish of us believes that our phones and laptops have not been scanned for information. So, surely, we can understand that if we have even one file with our name attached to it or, madly, within the text of the file, on our laptops, phones, in emails or texts, that someone, some business, some hacker, some terrorist, some country, has a profile on us. Just consider how Google and Amazon make money.

If you change telephone service providers, for example, it is imperative that you tell your previous provider to delete your details from their records under GDPR. If you have no longer have an account with them, it is much harder for you to track what they do with your information, and have conversations with them. If you have an account, you may, as is your right, complain to the ombudsman for arbitration; you cannot do this if you do not have an account with a business. Make them remove your details so they can not sell them without your knowledge.

Incidentally, I have never received a single cold call or advertising that matches my preferences.

Frankly, I cannot understand why people do online banking, and banks actually send emails to customers with the customers name within the email!

If you want to be lazy, prepare to pay hackers and scammers, with the money you want to use for the extra entertainment you now have time for, because you didn’t walk to the post office.

When you click on ‘Accept cookies’ on web pages, ask yourself, What will I actually get by allowing my viewing habits to be known?. Who will benefit from this? Is your web experience really improved? If you did not ask yourself what information you wanted from the internet, you should probably just go back to bed and have a little think about yourself.I have a browser that automatically sets all the little sliders to 'NO!' for marketing purposes and tracking. Did you vote for Trump? Did you vote for Brexit? Did you vote for the Conservatives or Labour? Did you badmouth someone? (You should understand that the last one here has a saying attached to it; 'The dog that fetches, carries.' Do you know what that means? It means that the person who provided you with information or gossip will also transport the information you provide them to everyone else. Did you know what you would get when you voted? Do you know what you will get if you do not accept cookies? Never mind! It is quicker to press 'Accept all Cookies' and aimlessly wander and pontificate because it takes no effort, and because every day is a 'duvet-day'.

Awake, ye drunkards, and weep. Joel 1:5

This is the final installment of my humorous submission for gaining a level 3 certificate in Mental Health and Mental Health Advocacy in the Workplace.

Because so much time is lost to mental ill-health, there is a consequent negative effect on the productivity of an organisation. When problems arise in the workplace mentally healthy people are better able to deal with these situations. Having a mentally healthy work environment reduces absenteeism from mental ill-health by reducing the probability of its occurrence as a consequence of the work environment. The reputation of the organisation is enhanced when it is known that the organisation cares for and adequately assists its employees in dealing with mental ill-health, and particularly so when the organisation is proactive in preventing mental un-wellness. By having good mental health physical health is improved and vice-versa.

There are legal responsibilities that organisations must meet; having a mentally healthy workplace is one of them and so there is a compliance to regulations.

Sometimes, in order to define something a list is required to define how groupings are arrived at. However, I am not going to do that because it requires bullet points.

Every employee should have a ‘wellness action plan’ whether they need one or not. It is a confidential document that is shared between the employer and individual employees to whom it specifically pertains to. In it there should be identifying statements that describe, define or even list, what will protect the employee’s mental health and well-being at work. Presumably, this wellness action plan should be beneficially shaped around existing mental health issues for individuals, and is formed around a solid structure of action an employee should take, that is standard for the treatment of all the employees.

Conversations need to start somewhere and so this wellness action plan is an excellent opportunity for employers to probe into potential employees’ lives to ascertain how much work can be wrung out of them before they break. Looking at it in a more benign way, a setting for a conversation about the mental limitations an employee has, had, or is beginning to experience, is a decidedly good position to be in for the employee, as this setting is much formalised and therefore has the scope to be private and confidential. In this way it is a proactive approach to managing mental health in the workplace by anticipating what may go wrong and the effects it may have on certain individuals. It allows safeguards to be put in place and they help to prevent stress and mental ill-health. They also evidence the employer’s efforts and focus on the prevention and management of mental ill-health in the workplace.

Identify key components of a wellness action plan.

Identify – Give sufficient detail so that someone else can recognise your description. This is sometimes used instead of ‘list’ or ‘state’ so think what the question is asking for.

N.B. It is the conjunction of the words ‘identify’, ‘key’, and ‘components’ in the question that drives me to believe that a list with bullet points is appropriate, and allowable here. However, I am under instructions to not use bullet points unless there is a definite call for a list in the question. The advice is that the answer will be ignored where there are bullet points and the question does not ask for a list. Hmmm. I want to use bullet points because it is my aim to learn and not necessarily pass examinations. Certainly, I shall need to completely rewrite this whole assignment to include bullet points where they are most certainly necessary for easy understanding and for compartmentalising information. Altogether, this means that my learning will commence only after the submission of this final assignment and the complete rewriting of it, for my own understanding of the subject.

The key components of a wellness action plan should contain a list of approaches that an individual can use and adapt to support their own mental well-being. Bear in mind that it is recommended that everyone should have a wellness action plan whether they have mental illness or not. So, the frequency of reading or accessing the wellness action plan remains, so far, a less than fully constructed concept. This may mean that a correlation between degree of mental ill-health and frequency of accessing the wellness action plan is fomented. However, the signs and symptoms of stress or mental ill-health should alert the employer and the employee that there are are circumstances that can trigger a spiral of mental diminishment in the employee. This then requires that the wellness action plan is somewhat memorised, otherwise it should be attached to the individual in some way or reviewed in an office daily. There may be other triggers, such as a lack of communication, or feelings of loss of control, that impart a feeling of mental un-wellness in an employee; these should appear in the wellness action plan. The impacts of stresses should be recorded in the wellness action plan. These, of course, would be based on past observations, or levels of probability. An understanding of how the employer can ameliorate potential and real problems in the workplace that does, or will, impact negatively on the employee’s mental wellness, should be in the wellness action plan. Of course, regular reviews, as mentioned earlier, should be conducted to update and amend, where appropriate, the wellness action plan. The employer and employee are free to have any other additions to the wellness action plan wherein they see fit that further additions should be made.

Poverty is known to be a major contributor to mental illness and can seem so insurmountable that some poverty-stricken people decide to take drastic action to avoid the effects of poverty and its seemingly endless strain on the mind. Some people will make themselves homeless; some are made homeless against their will; and, some will end their lives.

Talk to someone, your friends, family, employer or tutor if you are affected by poverty. The goal is to come up with a solution. Even an imagined future can help make us feel better for a little while. That is the time to put a plan into practice.

Samaritans 116 123 (really kind people who listen)

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is a charity that both carries out research and funds third-party research into poverty and its effects. Its focus is on ending poverty in the UK. Its origins are from the philanthropic nature of a Quaker confectioner. It works with private, public and voluntary sectors, and impoverished people. It is politically neutral and has no affiliations with any UK political party. Its areas of work cover: (here come those wonderful semi-colons again) cities, towns and neighbourhoods; housing; income and benefits; people; society; and work. (Wikipedia)

Describe how policy can support the mental health of individuals, including the provision for health and well-being.

We have come a long way from when witches were drowned or burnt at the stake in the Middle Ages. Burnt or drowned simply because some men and women demonstrated behaviour, such as visions, that may, or may not, be indicative, to their peers, of evil possession by a demon, or suchlike. It is fairly well understood that there were more ‘witches’ in the damp late Summers than when Summer culminated in a dry period. Mould, and mildew, and particularly ergot (which grows on damp rye) were prevalent, and set in, in the prolonged damp and warm days. Ergot is an hallucinogenic. Now, in the modern world, we have killed most of the witches, and both men and women are only prone to mental ill-health instead.

Gall’s Law states that ‘A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.’ - John Gall, systems theorist.

Obviously, trying to see whether someone drowns when held underwater, or burn when tied to a stake surrounded by fire, is not a good system to ascertain whether they are merely unwell or spiritually overrun. But at least, they tried.

Making a single rule to apply where it works well is a good start to making a simple system. It is also a good idea to group any rules that work, and make sure they do not out-rule each other. Once a bundle of related rules can be grouped and consistently used, there only remains shaping, reviewing, and shaping again, before they can be the basis for a simple system. Unfortunately, there are no absolutes in our world so we cannot always use the same rules universally. In this case, we rely on making a reliable system by using benchmarks to use as comparisons and levels of achievement in a complex system. Without these benchmarks, we must rely, largely, on subjective guesswork. When benchmarks are reached, both being a point at which there is too much, and too little, of something or other, specific protocols, initiatives, and programmes are brought into play. However, there are rules on when to apply these protocols, initiatives, and programmes. This is known as a ‘policy’.

The Government has a Mental Health policy that is based on a vision of how they would like mental health and mental ill-health services to be delivered. It is perceived to be that, without this overall modern vision, and effective legislation that supports it, the delivery of programmes and services that deal with mental health and mental ill-health will be both fragmented and inadequate. The policy of the Government is to bring about better outcomes through legislation.

One of the Government’s priorities is to prevent mental ill-health and promote well-being. To improve health outcomes and reduce inequalities in health.

Legislation brings health and care professionals, and other attendant service providers into a position of responsibility to promote well-being and be vigilant in discovering mental ill-health. Further, these bodies become active in pursuing enquiries into an individual’s life, including home life, to determine and log the extent of any mental aberration and any deterioration of health therein, sometimes to the mental detriment of the reclusive individual.

Describe strategies to promote well-being

There are strategies that are considered useful to promote well-being that do not have the permission of affected individuals, yet are nevertheless implemented by tacit agreement. One concern here is that some people have an ‘high uncertainty avoidance’ personality, while others a ‘low uncertainty avoidance’ personality, and there are situations in which many people feel uncomfortable, while the same situation allows other individuals to ‘run riot’ through the environment. This, of course, creates an inequality.

Strategies to promote well-being in the workplace or learning environment

Individuals can be given more control over their work or learning. Modern schooling in England has brutally used this strategy to create learning environments in schools that are more conducive to shared responsibility among pupils to study a subject as a group activity and to organise their own work, as opposed to direct lecturing directly from the tutor to the students. This has created a dissipated responsibility for learning in students and an attitude of diminished responsibility for their individual behaviour. Where lectures are absent there is a growing taste in individuals to become lazy in applying concentration to the task at hand, namely; listening to, and understanding any information that is being conveyed. Giving individuals greater control over their work, and the organisation of it, for an individual with an ‘high uncertainty avoidance’ personality is plain unfair. These people require rigid codes of behaviour and beliefs; are intolerant of unorthodox behaviour and ideas; appreciate explicit instructions; and rely on procedures and policies to reduce the chance of letting things getting out of control. However, the intent behind this strategy is to build self-esteem and self-confidence, which both contribute to well-being.

Another strategy to promote well-being in the workplace or learning environment is ‘involving individuals in decision making’. The intent behind this is to create stakeholders in the implementation and actioning of decisions thereby driving motivation towards a successful outcome. This raises morale and satisfaction. Some people, however, just like to pick up box ‘x’ from position ‘a’ and take it to position ‘b’ where they pick up box ‘y’ and take it to position ‘a’.

A useful strategy for assisting in the implementation of the previous two strategies is to train line managers and tutors to be certain that they support these strategies; to wit: delegating control and decision-making in the workplace. Realistically, line managers are either hired for the job or are promoted because they show signs of complying with this concept of leaving people to their own devices; this could reveal, if we look carefully, a lazy line-manager who really does not know what to do and how to plan properly, yet has been trained to accept particular strategies. Certainly, I have come across dozens of ill-equipped and poorly educated line-managers who are ‘fumbling in the dark for a light switch’.

Following on from the previous strategy is: promote good leadership and good relationships between leaders in the organisation and those guided by them or reporting to them. The intent behind this is to reduce conflict and build strong relationships which support well-being. Certainly, there is a sense of well-being among people of the same opinion. Yet, this opinion in the hands of jaded leaders once solidified, can become an, almost, absolute rule or protocol. It is very easy to use an idea that does not appeal to individuals in one arena and then have it verbally tested over and over again in an environment of agreement. Therefore, this strategy is a very dangerous tool indeed. It should only be used if the people who are subjected to the (almost absolute) ‘rule’ are stakeholders in the rule and can consequently vote on the implementation of the rule. This, of course, eliminates the need for personnel with controlling powers and places control in the hands of the individual – also not a good idea if anarchy is not the goal. So, the intent is good, yet the appointment of good leaders is not in the hands of the individuals who are to be subjected to a later concretion of an idea or concept held by the leader.

There is a prevailing strategy in the workplace to engage employees who readily accept the organisation’s goals. This is now considered to be, in many job interview scenarios, so fundamental that many job applicants are sidelined or dismissed as not useful, simply because they couldn’t care less about the aims or progress of a business because they use a disjunctive evaluation of the prospective role they might play in the business’ ambitions – “How much will you pay me?’. Yet, unfeeling AI or automation is ‘so de rigueur’ these days.

Wherein everyone is working towards the same goal there is shared success and a better promotion of well-being, through greater motivation.

People like routine. Routine in individuals’ lives is promoted by mental health teams to help alleviate stress and promote well-being. This next strategy is: Allow employees to have greater control over their work-life balance. Here, there is an idea that life does not include work and that work and life are entirely separated. With this strategy, there is a belief that the employee needs to have fun outside of the work environment to alleviate the dissatisfaction that accumulates in a work environment. There is a perception that a drift away from needing routine towards a compulsion to be in an environment that is slightly chaotic is required by an individual, in order for that individual to be stable.

Long work hours and irregular hours have been shown to be factors in the diminishment of mental health.

Another strategy to promote well-being in the workplace or learning environment is rewarding commitment and effort. This is because there is an understanding that it is important to show that commitment and effort is greater than doing a job well; “Good Job, Jane!”, is not as good as “Good effort, Jane”. 

Dr Carol Dweck, an American psychologist who holds the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professorship of Psychology at Stanford University, and is known for her work on motivation and mindset, considers that the former praise encourages a ‘fixed’ mind-set, while the latter praise encourages a ‘growth’ mind-set. Realistically, because Dr Dweck’s work is largely with learning children, we should be aware that encouraging a ‘growth’ mind-set is fine for young people practicing skills and attitudes, and not so fine for a brain surgeon finishing a job – “Good job, Susan!”, is probably better than, “Oh well, good effort, Sue”. However, there will be times when in the operating theatre any amount of effort will not be enough and encouragement for the expended effort will go a long way to alleviating any imagined guilt for not doing enough to save a life, and will certainly serve as a conduit for immediate support and a continuous stream of related support.

One avenue of early intervention which is an important factor in improving well-being is: reducing stress. Reducing stress has a consequence of reducing absences from work which prevents other workers from experiencing stress from added workloads. This ameliorates any dissatisfaction in the work place. Training programs and other initiatives help to prevent a rise in mental ill-health.

Workplace bullying can have a significant detrimental effect on mental health. Having a set standard of behaviour promulgated and proliferated throughout the work environment can prevent inappropriate controlling behaviour, mocking, and teasing.

Address for all my blogs: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

Groups of individuals

When I was at school we had work groups. We also had teams; we had football teams and we had netball teams. In class, we had groups. We were educated to be individual achievers. We were not expected to share culpability for a mistake. We were considered to be people, not children in the sense of children who ‘team’ up in gangs, and other favourite children to ‘play’ with.

For us, school was serious. School was preparing us for adulthood; an adulthood during which we were expected to excel, and that excellence would not be hampered by inadequacies in the workplace or our societal spheres. If we did not do well, only ourselves were to blame. We would never, although we didn’t know it, blame someone else for our lack of pernicious engagement on a task. We would never say, in the future, I was distracted. We were taught to focus, without deviation, disruption, and chatter.

On occasion, we would, in class, form into groups. Anyone who understands work teams, would recognise these groups in which we were held, as ‘Cross-functional teams’. Each of us had a separate task to accomplish within a project and inside a specific time. None of us were required to replicate another’s work. This is the only time we could cry off and say, when we received low marks for the completed work, ‘It’s not fair, Martin was in charge of that part of the experiment or project.’ We could have done, but we didn’t.

If we did not have faith in our cross-functional team members we should have checked that person’s workings. If we blamed someone else, we were taught that we had failed to take responsibility for our lack of foresight. The end result was that we learnt to include redundancies in our strategies. One method to accomplish this was by each group member using a strategy to overlap another group member’s work with their own individual workings, though not too in-depth because we were also taught time-management. We could then compare notes to make sure we ALL had an understanding of the veracity of the results compiled by each group member. None of us could blame another.

Often, our conclusions and explanations would differ, but none of us got it wrong.

When our teachers said work from your books or copy this from the blackboard, no one spoke, and no-one fooled around. There were no class clowns and no-one asked another student ‘How do I….?’ or ‘What is…..?’. Most striking is that no-one asked the teacher for help. Above all, none of us offered unsolicited help, and because help was never asked for, we did not get hampered by under-achievers using up valuable time. We all maintained individual accountability.

Later, as young adults, and as we matured into our lives, we apologised for our mistakes, because we recognised that we, as individuals, were at fault. We did not look around for our lost team members so they could bolster our confused sense of culpability with abstract murmuring. We did not believe that we could do something ‘Because everyone else does!’. In short, although we did not know the word, we understood what an hegemony is, and by this, we do not flounder, or flop around like a fish out of water. We are equipped with the tools to be individuals. This means that we do not experience ‘Learned helplessness’ as a condition of our schooling.

Does this sound like your schooling?

Next: Homogenisation and teams.

Bibliography:

Key Differences, Difference Between Group and Team,

Available at: https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-group-and-team.html

Accessed: 09^th October 2024

Lumen, Organizational Behaviour and Human Relations, Module 10: Managing Groups and Teams, Groups vs. Teams

Available at: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-organizationalbehavior/chapter/groups-vs-teams/

Accessed: 08^th October 2024

Return to work:

When people return to work from any kind of illness, there is a general conception that because the individual is back then they must be cured, or at least functional. However, someone in the organisation should make it their responsibility to welcome back the recently deteriorated person who has been restored to an acceptable level of capacity and capability to operate sufficiently in the work/learning environment. The newly rendered person needs to be updated with information that pertains to their responsibilities, changes in the work environment, its structure and policies, and any other details that may be considered to be initially confusing to the stripped-back individual. Customising of the individual needs to replace any details that were erroneously deleted during the recovery process while they were absent from the primary work operations they are to be assigned to. This may be a re-assignment in keeping with the level of deterioration and restoration of the individual that was previously required.

Like an old and restored car, if someone cannot pass an emissions test, it is best to make sure they are not in a room that does not allow the other workers to freely escape from. Vocal expressions from an individual, may not be quite finalised in their adjustment to a work environment that has been influenced by its conspicuous employees. An organisation should be aware that any new or absent employee will not be up to speed on conversation within a group and they should support the returning individual for a few days with conversation. Although not advisable for the self-respecting person, hiding in a toilet cubicle could assist an assigned supervisor or mentor in discovering whether the returning individual is soliloquising safely or quietly crying. Otherwise, monitoring could include conversations and an open-door policy for help. For the social media hungry people, asking to take selfies with them might make them feel either included or less weird than the mentor/supervisor making the requests. Social acceptance, however, does not yet allow sneaking around to gather information when one might actually be caught for it.

Define the term person-centred

A person-centred approach is directed attention on an individual, which takes an holistic method of application. This means that it is not just the results or outcome and its attendant difficulties of mental ill-health that are focused on. Rather, the whole of an individual’s life and current lifestyle is considered and there are drives into achieving positive changes in the individual’s life that are made to bring about a stable position which encompass personal security, sociability, work, and any other aspects of a person’s life. Advice on debt and finance is sometimes available.

Describe the importance of a person-centred approach for mental health

People feel that they are important and are thus self-centred (self-absorbed?). When mental health assistance is given with a person-centred approach the individual is given some control over their route to wellness. If they are dragged from their dwelling kicking and shouting and railing against mistreatment they will likely rebel against any indoctrination. However, if they are gently persuaded and given the opportunity to engage in mental reassignment they will embrace the concepts and new lifestyle as being through their own decisions and actions. 

Richard Thaler came up with ‘Nudge Theory’ some years ago. Nudge Theory is used by Governments to assist job-seekers to find their own way back into employment. Sometimes though, the reluctant job-seeker will find themselves on a mandatory program that extends from the DWP work coaches’ capacities yet gives the moaning job-seeker a chance to shape their job search and believe they have found a job to suit them.

A person-centred approach to mental health has the same result in satisfying the individual as to the degree of control they have over their mental health recovery and how to stabilise it to attain a plateau of wellness that can be reached through differing conduits while stopping and refreshing at different platforms along the route. It is important because the journey is a voluntary one that the individual, with a travel guide, can manipulate to suit their capacity to positively change.

Explain the importance of recognising one’s own responsibilities and limitations in relation to supporting the mental health of others

Managers with mental health training should follow the organisation’s policies for the reporting of mental ill-health and the support that should be given to the individual. This is important because any mishandling in this area can negatively impact on the individual, the position of the manager, and the organisation’s reputation. At this point, the manager has their own judgement and actions somewhat curtailed and a framework of assessment and action provides a guidance to the manager to alleviate the stress that the manager may experience on being responsible for support from their own, perhaps disjointed, approach. So, a good manager will have, in this way, realised the importance of recognising their own responsibilities and limitations.

Without a recognisance of limitations and an uneven or rugged approach to mental health support without following the organisation’s policies and procedures, respect and support of colleagues may be compromised and discrimination against individuals with mental ill-health may inadvertently occur. With this in mind (recognising one’s own responsibilities and limitations) it is important to know how to report a mental health issue in order that safeguards can be implemented and assistance from appropriate people and services can be sought and utilised.

Identify when it may be necessary to refer to others when supporting individuals with mental ill health. Include people you may refer to.

Without a recognisance of one’s own limitations and an uneven or rugged approach to mental health support without following the organisation’s policies and procedures, respect and support of colleagues may be compromised and discrimination against individuals with mental ill-health may inadvertently occur. With this in mind (recognising one’s own responsibilities and limitations) it is

important to know how to report a mental health issue in order that safeguards can be implemented and assistance from appropriate people and services can be sought and utilised.

Sometimes, mental ill-health has such control over an individual that psychosis will override the individual’s ‘normal’ perception of reality and will cause an individual to be unable to recognise their mental unruliness. In this case, this person would need to be persuaded to seek mental health adjustment services. Of course, this is not by injection, or by operant or classical conditioning (such as for Malcolm McDowell’s character in the film ‘A Clockwork Orange’, forced to watch gratuitous violence on a cinema screen while listening to music by Beethoven). 

This adjustment service is peopled with helpful and understanding persons. There is still, however, a mentality of ‘Keep Calm, and Carry on’ left over from wartime Britain in the 1940s that shrouds the prevalence of anxiety, stress, and other mental health issues. This is not helped by a sway among young people to move towards an attitude that has garnered the epithet ‘Snowflake’. Used in a derogatory way, it has, by dint of having a name, become a rallying point for people who are normally reasonable and fair-minded (a name being a shortcut or code for a whole person or concept). From which elevated position, a bit advanced from their normal resting position, they pour scorn on ‘weak’ people or people who perceive, rightly or wrongly, a bruised attitude in others. Hence. there is a concerted, though not necessarily co-ordinated, retreat from having mental ill-health brought up in a ‘normal’ conversation. By ‘normal’ I mean ‘safe’, or not complicated, such as not discussing religion and politics.

Referring someone to mental health services or persons may be the appropriate action where there is a failure in the individual to perceive their mental ill-health as treatable and especially when they seem to be a threat to themselves or others, notwithstanding that young people are in this group of people because they have unprotected sex, drink too much alcohol, and drive too fast.

Referral should be made when individuals present as psychotic and are not currently seeking mental health help or being seen by mental health persons, teams, or services; or are likely to harm themselves or others, including suicide (how can we know?); and doing something that could put someone else at risk through violence or aggression – but not, apparently, when they are drinking too much at a party, having unprotected sex with their friend’s girl/boy friend, and then driving home too fast full of bravado and high self-esteem that borders on delusional, with a subsequent drop into sorrow and anxiety the next morning when they remember what they did. (Sounds like this person should be arrested for being in possession of an offensive nature who is exhibiting three counts of self-harm, likely to endanger others through violent use of a car, and signs of a bi-polar mental health condition).

When to seek help in supporting an individual with mental ill-health largely depends on whether the manager or responding person is at work or is otherwise dealing with an employee of the organisation they work for. The organisation’s policies will guide the manager accordingly. Of course, if the manager encounters someone who does not work at their place or organisation they can ignore them and get on the nearest bus to escape – or just say ‘I don’t carry any change, sorry.’, or ‘While you are living under my roof you will do as I say. Get a job!’

Low Uncertainty Avoidance

People act first and then get information

Comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty

They work hard to miminise rules and laws that infringe on people's diverse perspectives

High Uncertainty Avoidance

• Require rigid codes of behaviour and beliefs

• Intolerant of unorthodox behaviour and ideas

• Appreciate explicit instructions

• Rely on procedures and policies to reduce the chance of things getting out of control

But, what does this mean?

Fear; nervousness; panic; soliloquy; tendrils; capability; judgement; questions; advice; teamwork; needs and wants; consistency; disorder; self-elicitation; experiment; empiricism; heuristics; practice; bravery; adventure; holiday; confidence; environment; teams; externalise; conformity

These are the pieces of a figurative jigsaw, which I intend to assemble to make a coherent ‘vista’ of some of our perceptions, and interpretations of the world around us; our own tiny spheres of existence.

Do you prefer a package holiday or to just arrive in a country and ‘wing it’?

The young, school-age, uneducated tyro of holiday-taking might start by camping with friends in a local farmer’s field. Ooooh! It’s thrilling, because it breaks out of a long existence of rigid schooling and parenting – sit still, be quiet, and LEARN! Then, at home, do your homework, eat your evening meal, go to bed, above all, DON’T ARGUE! As a whole, this is searing into us a template of finite planning. There is a time for sleeping; a time for schooling; a time for homework; a time for play; a time for work/chores; and a time to be bored. Bored? Yes, this is an unplanned time with nothing in it that would serve to either improve our lives or entertain us (entertainment is one of our needs). Yes, you are right to use Sigmund Freud’s phrase; I am talking about training to be ‘Anal Retentive’ – Everything in order, ‘ship-shape and Bristol-fashion’ as they used to say. By Jove! Splendid!

What do you think would happen if we, God-like, lifted this person, as a young adult with no money, and placed them into a community abroad in which this person could not speak the local language, and the food eaten there was not the same as the culinary fare of this person’s home country?

I can tell you what happened to me as someone who, quite the opposite to being ‘anal retentive’, is ‘anal compulsive’. As, such, I take risks; I have a low uncertainty avoidance personality. If you are not understanding this, you might consider how a rhinoceros defecates by spinning its tail to scatter its faeces in all directions; it is not waiting for a nice bush to appear to hide behind, to secretly ‘do it’s business’. I don’t need order, and 'disorder' is neatly wrapped and placed in my toy-box. It is my most familiar and cherished toy, from which, as a hobby, I create skeletal edifices of achievement by surviving in harsh environments – tides and inclement weather included). On this neon scaffolding, I build features and proud architecture with imagined feats of accomplishment. I am not good at surviving, just lucky and imaginative.

My upbringing was not rigid, except for my schooling.

In attempting to hitch-hike from England to Athens, Greece, during winter, I found myself sitting by a motorway sliproad one mile south of the Austria / Slovenia border, during a four-day national holiday. There were no cars moving anywhere. Previously, I had noticed that the temperature in France was minus 10⁰C. It was the same in Maribor, the nearest city to where I was. I had nothing to lie on and only the clothes I was in, a sleeping-bag and no shelter. I tried to make a fire by plucking twigs out of the snow and drying them next to my skin to set light to, later. The twigs were too green. For two days I looked up and down the motorway – no cars. I watched airliners fly south across a perfect blue sky, and thought how warm the passengers were, and how surprised and delighted they will be when they feel the heat of the southern climes in the lower latitudes. Still sitting on the snow, I put my head between my knees and wept. For the rest of the day, I looked for cars, put my head between my knees and wept. It had taken me eight days to get there, and I had only about four English pounds (GBP) of local currency, and no food. I looked at the airliners overhead and the vapour trails, and I keened, I sobbed, and I wept.

Eventually, I spoke aloud  to myself (soliloquy) and told myself that I would die there unless I did something to save myself. ‘This is the end, except for my capability to survive in harsh conditions’. Bravery, confidence, and a desire for adventure had gotten me there; foolishness, a building feeling of learned helplessness, and the tendrils of conformity had viciously seized me, and stopped me there.

With no-one to give me advice, I used my own judgement. At the time, I spoke Bayerisch, a dialect of Bavaria, in the south of Germany; but not Slovenian, and I was midway between England and Greece. I also did not speak Greek, so arriving there in an exhausted state with culture shock and drained emotions was probably not a good idea. In any case, we all want to run home when we fear death and suffering. Empiricism, or experience of the local conditions, and the pace of travelling long distances by hitch-hiking, was the only advice I had. By using self-elicitation, I spoke aloud of the plan I would use. There wasn’t anyone around to hear me! The practice of abiding by rules as an heuristic for safe conduct would simply not save me; with no food or shelter, I was about to slip into hypothermia. Years later, I had hypothermia in Amiens, in France. Total confusion; I lightened my rucksack by throwing away pens and pencils and kept books and wet boots. I was trying to hitch-hike the wrong way. I had to be told by a Frenchman that stopped and told me so. If I had gotten hypothermia in Slovenia, during their lengthy national holiday, I would have died. No-one would have found me in time.

Austria was known for having the worst prisons in Europe. I crossed back into Austria and boarded a train with no ticket. To me, Austrians seemed to have a High Uncertainty Avoidance approach to life – certainly the passengers were shocked when, in Bayerisch, I told the ticket-collector I had no ticket. They audibly gasped. And again, when I said I had no money; this time louder. Their 'gemutlichkeit' or comfortableness was shattered. Obviously, my Bayerisch was not local to the region, and I was thrown off the train, rather than arrested. I was shown some mercy.  A rigid thinker might attempt to board the next train. I knew, however, that the trains have radios and telephones, and because I was thrown off at a very remote station I would be instantly identified as the bearded man with a rucksack. I back-tracked down the track away from England to the next station and deliberately missed the next train. I fare-dodged the following train all the way across Austria to Salzburg. The train waiting there was a German train heading for Munich; and here is the difference between low uncertainty avoidance and high uncertainty avoidance as it manifests in people. Many of us believe the Germans are rigid in applying rules and policies. This is not so true in the south, (Bavaria). Obviously, now my Bayerisch language, being THE local language, would endear me a little to the natives, more so than to the Austrians. The ticket-collecter came. ‘I have no ticket.’ He gave me a price for Munchen (Munich). ‘I have no money. I lost it in Greece.’ Interestingly, the other passengers were not offended; no gasps. The ticket-collector took me to first class and told me to get off at Munchen. At Munich, I got off and tried to sneak away, and then I felt a hand on my shoulder. In Germany, the railway police are armed. Oh no! It's was OK, it was the ticket-collector. He said to me, in English, ‘Englishman, I wish I had your bravery and could lie as well as you!’

Back (home) in Germany, I was fairly safe; I knew the attitudes, the lives and schedules from having worked there when I was seventeen. I rested by sleeping above the railway police office (builders had made a hole in an upper wall in the entrance hall and had left a tower scaffold there, which I climbed) while my new 'friends' travelling in different directions were thrown off the platforms every night, by the railway police. We traded our clothes with each other - hot weather clothes for cold weather clothes for those of us going north and vice-versa. 

Easy hitch-hiking and speaking German got me money and long rides. Only at Calais were there problems. I was a few Euros short for a foot-passenger ticket for the ferry to England. I asked in French for Euros from groups of people arriving. Every one of the English people shunned me. They didn’t speak French. Eventually, I saw a young French woman and asked her, in French, for a couple of Euros. She told me, in English, that she was taking a car to England, and gave me a lift onto the ferry, and then to Bedford, where she was going. She took a far greater risk than the English people did, who had only contempt for me, because they didn’t speak French.

My school education did not include using teamwork to solve problems. I was taught to be responsible for my own actions and there was never a shared culpability for failure. I struggled to understand why teams are important; we were trained to be independent achievers. Yet, the businessman in Stuttgart, who gave me all the money that he had in his pocket (€120); and the young French woman who gave me a lift across the English Channel were in my team.

Eventually, with persistent attempts, there would have been alternative routes to returning to my home in England, but three days from Slovenia to England by hitch-hiking is a good ride. 

An aside: This doesn’t beat a single ride from Athens to Peterborough three months later; when I had to take my turn driving an articulated lorry, in Germany, at night, carrying thirty tons of wool. I didn’t even have a driving licence and had very poor uncorrected vision. The tachograph (record of the vehicles movement) later revealed eighty miles an hour when going down the hills and fifteen miles an hour going up the hills.

All posts with the image of four beings (image left) are on 'Mental Health and Mental Health Advocacy at Work'.

All posts with this image are about creative study suggestions - they are not intended to be advice

Continuing with my answers to a level 3 certificate in 'Mental Health and Mental Health Advocacy in the Workplace; in which I am attempting to answer with a null hypothesis to prove (or not) the positive hypothesis (the statements given to me in the course material). This section is split into a number of segments so is a series of answers to one main question.

Describe ways to support an individual with mental ill health for each of the areas identified.

Mental health decline and early intervention:

Let us start with SmartPhones and ClickBait: Mental health decline attributed to modern digital internet and other social connectivity is still in its nascent state before the individual becomes addicted to dopamine; the release of which is triggered by anticipation. Let us be clear, though, that anticipation is a key feature of the infant-tickling rhyme ‘Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear. One step, two steps, Tickly under there!’. It is good in moderate doses. Just the same as ‘Peekaboo!’. Let us not forget the ‘Jack-in-a-box’ waiting for the ‘Jack’ to leap up, and ‘Buckaroo’ (the only fun in taking turns to load a plastic mule is the anticipation of it bucking everything off – there is no goal or reward). Even ‘Monoploy’ has an anticipation of landing on the ‘Go to Jail’ square when the player gets past ‘Vine Street’.

The rise in incidences of mental decline, though not necessarily widely recognised by mental health clinicians who regularly subscribe to frequent digital phone usage, began when mobile phones first had the capability to send text messages. Then, the sender of a text could initiate an anticipation of a response to their text. More importantly, this was on-demand. The content of the message was practically irrelevant as can be realised by understanding the brevity of those early text messages: –

- Sender A “Where are you?”

- Sender B “At home. Where are you?”

- Sender A “At home. What are you doing?”

A simple telephone call would easily have the capacity to send and receive such drivel, and back then, in the 1990s, would have been much cheaper at 12p per minute against 10p per text. However, there is no anticipation of receiving an unsolicited telephone call and it is the release of dopamine, and its release on demand, that is relevant here. More importantly, the actual conversation comes third in the list of importance to the texter. Second, is the sociability aspect and having someone there to dispel any kind of newly-imagined loneliness.

Click-Bait is such as this: - ‘See how these actors from the 1980s look like now’ There then follows a series of pictures (probably 20 or so) that creates anticipation for the next revelation of an actor’s ugly transmogrification into a hideous old monster. Apparently, the fun wears thin before the last picture is viewed.

We all know, yet really do not want to recognise fully that we are all becoming less intelligent while we rely more and more on digital technology; we allow simple decisions to be taken from us because we cannot be bothered to apply ourselves to discovery. The canker has begun, yet there may still be time to intervene. Whether this will later be considered to be an early intervention depends on the time-frame it takes to eliminate this addiction to on-demand dopamine. There is always a temporal facet to everything. Many people will argue that digital technology helps them with complicated tasks and increases sociability for isolated people. Yet, in the modern Global North, isolation is now considered to be: having no battery power for our phones, and tends to ignore the remoteness of open countryside or elderly people with no analogue connectivity, such as visitors.

To be fair, it was the innovation (now disruption – in that it has replaced and not enhanced anything) of the home PC and video games played at home that reduced the social interaction of many young people. Digital communication, presently through gaming platforms, has somewhat re-established social interaction for those people; with the rest of the Global North also regarding their phone bill as being more important than food and heating. Where the individual is, in the ubiquitous chain of mental health decline, will always remain unclear until the individual is debriefed in their entirety.

From The Guardian 14^th October 2018 -

‘We have known for a long time that repeated interruptions affect concentration. In 2005, research carried out by Dr Glenn Wilson at London’s Institute of Psychiatry found that persistent interruptions and distractions at work had a profound effect. Those distracted by emails and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ, twice that found in studies on the impact of smoking marijuana. More than half of the 1,100 participants said they always responded to an email immediately or as soon as possible, while 21% admitted they would interrupt a meeting to do so. Constant interruptions can have the same effect as the loss of a night’s sleep.’

from The lost art of concentration – The Guardian Sunday 14 Oct 2018

accessed: some time in 2022.

same link below

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/14/the-lost-art-of-concentration-being-distracted-in-a-digital-world

One could utilise Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars framework to reconcile dilemmas in order to glean some idea of how to be most useful in offering support to an individual with mental ill health at the mental decline and early intervention stage. 

There are six steps:

1 Identify the dilemma - Gather information from multiple sources to get a deeper understanding, by recognising the dilemmas.

2 Chart the dilemma - Make the dilemma specific (what is it about and who is the holder?) and crack the line to invite people to combine the opposite.

3 Stretch the dilemma - Stretch the dilemma by making it bigger and bolder.

4 Make epithets - Emphasise the negatives of the extremes to invite people not to be there.

5 Reconcile the dilemma - How can value X help you get more of value Y?

6 Action planning - Define action points to make it real.

A little too strong. Perhaps?

Sadly, the idea of there being early intervention in the decline of mental health for an individual is the same as a sailing ship on a lee shore. Only Neptune can drag the ship to deeper waters, or God change the direction of the wind. In both rescue attempts there is a recognisance that monumentous intervention is required; free-will is over-ridden. There is, however, a more earthly solution, if the ship is not lost beforehand: in meteorology, when there is low pressure the wind will rotate in an anti-clockwise motion, and in a high pressure environment the wind will rotate in a clockwise fashion; so, depending on where the ship is, (no good if it is central to the environmental conditions), simply waiting for the environment to change may actually be a good solution – take a rest.

Today, we have dopamine addicts who may further decline into mental ill-health, while they are in a work environment. Any help that is given must surely include weaving in some form of anticipation. How odd! Or, the employers need to have anticipation as part of their employees work load. Perhaps another form of positive reinforcement needs to be introduced. ‘Good Job!’ ‘Way to go, Bob!’, and ‘Yee hah!’; but make them wait for it.

In an ideal world, managers, and senior personnel would have a good insight into the employees, pupils, and underlings’ personal lives and how this affects their work capacity. Equally, these people would have the time and motivation to enquire (or eavesdrop in the toilet cubicle) into how employees are coping with their work load and function. In this way, these key persons can be aware of any changes in mood and, in a perfect world, make a deductive decision as to the mental health of the individual, or the decline of the mental health of the individual. In reality, the average person would flail about and come up with an inductive guess, from the compilation of collected information and a conclusion drawn up from that.

At the early intervention stage there should be a reassurance of there being someone to talk to about stress, resentment, anger, and anything else that is currently disturbing the employee, that pertains to the work and work environment, such as worker relationships, and behaviours. This, however, is merely good business practice as it pays to keep the experienced work-force happy. (This, then, is when I finally get to understand the term ‘bi-conceptual’). Help is making someone feel better AND making sure the business doesn’t lose money through poor worker ethics. Wrapped up in this verbal and non-verbal communication is a necessity to monitor work-loads to avoid stress. Early intervention might include informal de-briefs in a casual, not at all covert, way – just chatting. Further information on employees’ life outside of the work/learning environment is also useful.

An ironic example: There was a man who bragged that his horse only needed a strand of hay a day to survive. When he was dazedly questioned how he knows this, he said. ‘I fed it half a bale of hay. Then, I halved the amount each day. It died when I only gave it half a strand of hay, but it was alive when it had a whole piece.’

The moral of the story is there should not be any work-related problems that adversely affect the employees, but poorly trained managers with employees that have mental ill-health are like people clumsily putting their fingers on balls of mercury – it won’t stick to them, is toxic, and it will find a route away from force to coalesce elsewhere.

Explain the importance of positive relationships and effective communication when supporting individuals with mental ill health. 

The importance of positive relationships:

The importance of communication, including having difficult conversations and active listening:

Continuing with the answers I used to pass a Level 3 Certificate in 'Mental Health and Advocacy in the Workplace' by testing the statements from the course in their negative form, or using the 'null hypothesis' to prove the positive hypothesis. Bear in mind that I am not a nutritionist or medically trained in any field.

People are fragile; fragile in their ability to believe in themselves. One of the ways that people affirm their relevance is by talking about other people when those people are absent. Because most of us are so fragile that we compare ourselves to other people in the hope of finding some kind of malfeasance or aberration in those other people which does not exist in us, we need to make announcements to friends, colleagues, and relatives of our brilliance by inferring the possession of opposite traits to the slurred persons. However, only the most crass person would make direct comparisons out loud. In diminishing other people during conversation (some would say gossip) we might say ‘She can’t keep a job’ and ‘She sponges off the Government’ to infer by suppressed premises that if one can say that about another in a disapproving manner, then one is not of the same ilk, or is better than that.

In order for this kind of conversation to take place, there must exist, at least, a perception in the speaker that the recipient of these treacherous statements is receptive to such atrocious postulation. In these situations there is a mutual bonding taking place, or a reaffirmation of a bond.

Sadly, it is the human condition to make comparisons to other people, past or present. Even in a religious group there should be a continuous and concerted striving to be a better person than one has been in the past or, in a fug of self-righteousness, better than the ‘nasty’ person they have just encountered in the shop or at the bus-stop. How then can we have a positive relationship with anyone if we are different to the norm that the individual is used to, without also ‘back-stabbing’? If we are different to the person we are trying to reach, will that person relax in our presence?

With this in mind, a positive relationship with an individual with mental ill health, when supporting them, must either be fully intertwined with an acceptance of their mental ill health which may present as them being part of the hegemony of talking about people behind their backs (which is plainly a sign of mental ill health - doubting themselves or feeling insecure or diminished); or completely refrain from mentioning their insipid perception of others and their characteristic of openly maligning other people. So, the dichotomy is whether to be mentally ill and join in, or ignore this widespread manifestation of mental ill health in others and be seen as ‘holier than thou’. It is not without purpose that many religions have an underlying current of advising the supplicant to be non-judgemental; In other words – don’t bring someone down in your estimation to make yourself feel better.

Here then, we can understand that making no judgement and refraining from making declarative statements is a good position to be in when preparing a figurative garden for positive relationships to grow. And, this is certainly where one should be when supporting someone with mental ill health.

Putting aside narcissism and its cousins as being aspects of mental ill health, and driving too fast, unprotected sex, and getting drunk at the weekends as being self-harm, perhaps we should focus on the blatant and most commonly perceived mental ill health manifestations and, more keenly, on vocally expressed mental angst or ill health as being the best grounds for positive relationships to be efficacious when in support of someone with mental ill-health; as in ‘I am the same as you’.

Many full time employees spend more time at work than at home with their families, or in the company of their friends and preferred acquaintances. This actually might not be true yet it is true that they may not be adequately engaged with their families – either they are asleep or lack fertile consciousness in a flagging relationship. If a fruitful engagement is lacking outside of work, then it is important that the individual is in a positive environment at work, if only as a bolt-hole. In a positive work environment, with positive relationships, there is a reduction of the chance of employees feeling isolated. Many isolated individuals can descend into an attitude of low motivation and low morale. Of course, these two traits, from the business’ position will negatively impact on productivity or the quality of the work effort.

However, where there are positive relationships, populated by trust, encouragement, empathy, and support, employees should feel more positive in their approach to problems, at work and outside of work, and even the banality of their work if their role involves repetitious effort or mundane tasks. With positive relationships at work, even though they may be superficial and conditional on being an employee at the same work site, there is good reason to believe that absenteeism is reduced and there is a better worker to output ratio.

The importance of communication, including having difficult conversations and active listening:

A question that arises here is: How far should Corporate Social Responsibility extend, and what should be included in the package?

Of course, company policies and procedures, Health & Safety Regulations, and hierarchical protocols need to be made clear to the inductee during an initial meeting at work. And, certainly, these aspects of being in work need to be re-iterated or, at least, available to the employees. Yet, how far should the employer reach into their employees personal lives?

While, large organisations may have an HR department that can handle mental health issues, most of the UK’s economy is made up of SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises). In fact, according to businessadvice.co.uk, 99% of the nation’s business population is an SME, which together employ 60% of the country’s workforce. SMEs individually have less than 250 employees and an annual turnover of less than £50 million GBP.

Communication is so important that it is problematic when the content or direction of communication is inappropriate, or perceived to be invasive. As for difficult conversations, there must be at least one participant who has an even countenance and a large degree of equanimity. Where does a small business find somone like that?

Realistically, a good listener who can show empathy is most useful when difficult conversations are to be had or commence. Someone trained in Personal Sales, particularly Solution Sales, would be a good person to designate as the go-to mental health person. Let us never forget that any concerns that an employee has about their work conditions and environment is indicative of a risk factor for mental ill health. Work-related issues SHOULD therefore be dealt with, with one eye on preventing, diverting, or alleviating mental anxiety.

From a wide and wistful perspective, the two old chaps working together at jointly hand-sawing a log at a sawyers mill, who barely talk at all is a scene of connectedness, even communication; if this is a scene in ‘The Waltons’, the 1970s television series set somewhere on an American mountain. Today, the trust in a work colleague’s ability and capacity can be as reassuring to employees as when there is a fevered to-and-fro rap between a conversation’s participants. Inevitably though, someone with mental ill health will have a predilection towards using their SmartPhone to assuage their worries and their inability to ameliorate their perceived problems; the typical ‘Ostrich with its head in the sand’ syndrome.

In contrast, if we go back to ‘The Waltons’ scene there is a reassurance of stability, trust, and a well of sound advice waiting to quench any thirst when feeling uneasy. This lack of vocal conversation is the most valuable, and rarest, facet of good communication.

Postive relationships require communication, and communication that is intended to be effective as a platform for understanding an individual will likely be open to shared work concerns and reciprocal support. Participants in this type of communication might include managers, supervisors, work colleagues holding the same position, tutors, and welfare staff (including HR).

Back to SmartPhones: Active listening usually means showing the speaker that one is listening to them. Often, this is accomplished by paraphrasing their statements and sending it back to them. This assures the speaker that they are making sense and they are understood by an attentive and interested person. In the modern day, a dilemma arises on whether a SmartPhone in the meeting should be used during a conversation to access a website that pertains to mental health, or clarification on a legal aspect, or something else that is currently being discussed. We, commonly, believe that the use of a digital device during a conversation with a real person in the same room (analogue conversation) is indicative of diverted attention. It is, however, fine to use a pen and paper, in a 1970 / 80s film scene that is set in a psychiatrists office.

Whether to actually take notes is a bone of contention; many people would feel slighted if the listener did not take notes. It comes down to this: if the listener has never had any kind of therapy or attended a GP or A&E department at a hospital with any kind of serious problem then this listener would not be inclined to take notes because they might be following an idea that it shows a lack of concentration on the speaker’s words (diverted attention).

If the SPEAKER has had therapy or atended their GP or A&E with a serious condition they would be used to having notes taken as they speak. Consequently, this speaker would feel affronted and ignored if notes are not taken. Whether the speaker is talking nonsense or not, the words, disjointed sentences, and spoken references, are important to them at that time. Special attention MUST be shown to those words, and particularly any emphasis placed on them. We all know, though, that if you write your thoughts down when you come back from the pub on a Friday night, the next morning they make no sense. Nonetheless, they were important at the time. If the words are nonsense in listening circumstances then just doodle notes if you are listening, or even not listening.

The hazard here is that only one in four people will experience strong mental ill health; which means that three in four people believe they are normal and they use a misaligned form of thinking to deal with other people, more specifically the one person in four segment of the population. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Completely wrong when you are dealing with mental crisis or any kind of relationship – it takes no consideration of what the other person(s) actually feel and what THEY want to happen. The Biblical sense behind the statement is that one should not steal from; lie to; attack; talk about; take advantage of; another person. It makes no in-roads into deciding what personal preferences someone else has.

Certainly, CARES, one of many Customer Service protocols, has:

Communication as its first goal - clearly communicate the process and set expectations; 

Accountability - taking responsibility for fixing the problem; Responsiveness - don’t make the customer wait for for your communication or solution; 

Empathy – acknowledge the impact that the situation has on the customer; 

Solution – at the end of the day, make sure to solve the issue(s) or answer the question.

Factors that may increase the risk of mental ill health in individuals.

Factors from inside the learning or work environment:

• Der (masc.) Junge - The boy;
  
• Die (fem.) Kirche - The Church (obviously churches are lovely);
  and
  
  
• Das (neut.) Madchen - The girl.

When there is an unclear chain of communication or policies are unclear:

When there is poor management or misaligned supervision:

Factors from outside the learning or work environment:

Temporary factors:

Physical health -

Long-term factors:

Continuing the theme of how I answered a level 3 Certificate in Mental Health at Work and Mental Health Advocacy. I passed, and I had the most fun testing the course material in its negative form; in Social Science this is called the null hypothesis. The intent is to prove the positive hypothesis. This particular subject is somewhat nebulous and the tutor remarked that she had to revise her own understanding of mental ill-health. The paragraph headings are the declarative statements in the course material. The rest are my answers.

Next will be: What is meant by the mental health continuum?

What can be a factor in mental ill-health?

Any condition that disrupts an individual's everyday life.