Leadership and Mental Health: How Leaders Need to Take Care of Their Team

Wednesday, February 20, 2020 at 11:30 AM PT, 2:30 PM ET

We now recognize that mental health issues affect at least one in five Canadians. This estimate includes individuals in the paid workforce and we also recognize the significant personal and organizational costs that are attributable to mental health issues. As a result of public awareness campaigns many organizations have implement mental health strategies that are, for the most part, focused on raising awareness of mental health issues. It is now clear that a more comprehensive and effective approach requires organizational responses aimed at [a] prevention (e.g., stress reduction), [b] intervention (e.g., providing assistance) and [c] accommodation (e.g., helping individuals through crisis). It is equally clear that organizational leaders play a key role in each of these initiatives.

You will learn:

the three main constituents of workplace mental health programming (prevention, intervention, accommodation)
the role of leaders in each of these three areas
effective leadership strategies to assist employees through prevention, intervention and accommodation

Take-home messages

It is absolutely clear that mental health issues are management issues
Mental issues manifest in the workplace and need to be recognized and dealt with

Hosted by

Kevin Kelloway, PhD

Professor of Organizational Psychology, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

E. Kevin Kelloway is the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Occupational Health Psychology and Professor of Organizational Psychology at Saint Mary's University, Halifax NS. His research focuses on issues related to organizational leadership, mental health in the workplace and occupational health psychology and he has published over 200 articles and book chapters and 14 books dealing with these issue. He has been elected a Fellow of four academic societies and received awards for Distinguished Contributions to I/O Psychology and for being a Distinguished Psychologist in Management. He is active in several professional associations and served as President of the Canadian Psychological Association in 2016. A popular public speaker, he also runs a consultancy advising both public and private sector clients on a variety of issues related to leadership and human resource management.

Moderated by

Arla Day, PhD

Director, CN Centre for Occupational Health & Safety and Professor in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Saint Mary's University, Canada

Dr. Arla Day is a Professor in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at Saint Mary's University, specializing in Occupational Health Psychology. She is also the Director of the CN Centre for Occupational Health & Safety.