Diversity is the idea that each person is unique. These individual differences serve a vital purpose in society. The value of diversity wasn’t a common thing explored in the past. But, as time progresses, people are beginning to understand how important it is to unite people of all races, ethnicities, religions, and gender to form a cohesive group and community.
Doing so offers communities and groups a lot of benefits.
Below we plunge into the details to learn more about diversity and its connection with mental health, especially in the professional workspace.
Why Diversity is Important
Diversity Brings Innovation and Creativity
Every culture, nation, and person has a unique perspective on the world. Every culture, country, and individual also has unique information, viewpoints, and ideas. Combining these perspectives and ideas to benefit a workplace can do wonders.
By listening to or working with people with diverse experiences, viewpoints, and backgrounds, you can all gain new insights. And when you acquire new knowledge, you might inspire a creative spark within yourselves.
In addition, the more different you are, the more you may learn from one another because two brains are always better than one.
Improves Productivity
Bringing together individuals from different origins and life experiences might lead to developing concepts or viewpoints others may not have thought of or been aware of.
Their unique experiences and worldview influence each person’s unique perspective. Instead of everyone providing the same ideas and conclusions while solving a problem, various interpretations and methods can significantly improve productivity and impact how you see or approach things.
Poor mental health impacts everyone, including individuals who provide care for others and businesses that want to ensure their staff is fit, secure, and efficient. However, because mental health is a less apparent health issue than physical problems, it is misunderstood, ridiculed, and ignored.
Overcoming Stigma at Work
Talking about it is the first step towards eradicating the stigma. However, talking about something you can’t see can be challenging.
It is incredibly challenging to talk about mental health in communities of color, LGBTQIA+ people, and women living or working in a society with extra cultural stigmas, biases, and limited access to vital mental health care and resources. Underrepresented populations are also less likely to have access to necessary mental health services.
Micahi Gebreyes– content and community manager for Greenhouse Software, studied the relationship between mental health and diversity. Although it sometimes seems taboo to talk about mental health, particularly at work, it should not be.
Here are five strategies for lowering stigma, making the workplace more accepting of diverse people, and avoiding mental health issues.
- Raise awareness by providing staff with access to learning opportunities.
- Count mental health among the wellness advantages.
- Promote a balanced work-life balance.
- Express the support of the leadership for behavioral improvements.
- Constantly monitor engagement to monitor employee morale.
Moreover, culturally sensitive therapy is very effective in averting mental health problems. It is a treatment that strongly emphasizes people’s ethnicity, culture, and belief system. The therapists specialize in culturally sensitive therapy and integrate learning related to customs, traditions, values, and viewpoints that differ between cultures into the treatment.
Summing Up
Diversity is a natural state of existence. It also encourages cognitive dissonance and multi-dimensional thinking. Thus, diverse communities often deal with mild or severe mental health issues due to racism and societal biases. It is essential to identify them and take measures to rectify them.