Writing
Personal blogs on workplace mental health, the systems that shape it, and what the evidence really says.
What would help mental health at work? Ask the people there
Every group on our mental health first aid course is asked what their employer could do. Group after group, workload and flexibility keep coming up.
Blame the tenant: what 28 years of damp and mould taught me
Scotland's Awaab's Law now says landlords must not assume damp and mould are the tenant's fault. I lived with it for 28 years. This is what that assumption cost.
Who gets to define suffering? Even psychiatry is less sure
Ten labels, and only one ever talked through with me. Even one of psychiatry's defenders concedes diagnoses can't rest on objective facts. So who decides?
Searches for burnout help are down. Struggling isn't.
Searches for burnout prevention and manager mental health training have halved. The stress hasn't. So what are the falling searches really telling us?
Mandatory mental health first aid is the wrong fix
Making mental health first aid a legal requirement sounds like parity with physical first aid. It isn't. The standard worth making law is ISO 45003.
We've stopped noticing each other. At work, that matters
Before any mental health conversation, someone has to notice. We're doing less of it than we used to. Why it matters at work, and how to get better at it.
Mental health first aiders are being asked to do the wrong job
HSE says there's no evidence mental health first aid improves how workplaces manage mental health. That was never the first aider's job to begin with.
I'm 55. I won't make it to 67 in work, and I'm not alone
I grew up thinking I'd retire at 60. Now my state pension age is 67, and at 55 I already can't work full time. A generation is being worn down before it gets there.
Same label, different needs: what a diagnosis doesn't tell you
Cream paper, blue paper, and ten minutes at Rheumatology. What a diagnosis doesn't tell you about someone's needs, and why we should ask instead.
The big mental health charities should be broken up
A 'UK' mental health programme sends its training through a body that only licenses England. It's a symptom. The money should follow local communities instead.
Needs, not labels: help at work shouldn't wait for a diagnosis
A government panel says support at work should be needs-led, not dependent on a diagnosis. It's right. Here's why the label became the gate, and what to watch.
"It is understood she may be depressed"
I was a missing person at 27. Help came from where I least expected it, and not from where it should have. Work treats people the same way.
A psychiatrist says most patients can live with their symptoms
A former head of the Royal College of Psychiatrists says most patients can live with their symptoms if they have a job, money, a home and relationships. Work is one of them.
Harassment law says prevent. Mental health gets a return plan
From 30 October employers must take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment. The national plan for health at work is about keeping people in work and getting them back.
The disposable worker is already in your office
MIT's Paul Osterman says 35% of US workers are now treated as disposable, and few are gig workers. Glasgow shows how insecure even an employee's contract can be.
What people carry into work isn't a diagnosis
Grief, money, a childhood nobody chose. Most distress at work starts with what people carry, not something wrong with them. What that means if you manage people.
We pay for the shift and take the caring for free
Care jobs are paid, and paid badly. The caring inside them, the noticing and the staying, was never priced at all. Why that matters in every workplace, not only in care.
Compassion has become a product. I sell it.
Awareness days, wellbeing apps and mental health first aid are now an industry. Mark McCollum says it keeps an unwell system running. Where he is right, and where I part company.
The system knows what to do. It just won't do it.
Work-related stress has had a legal duty, HSE standards and an ISO standard for years. The Birmingham University letter shows the gap was never knowledge. It's enforcement.
Resilience training asks the wrong person to adapt
Richard Murphy asks who carries the cost of adapting to decisions made elsewhere. At work that cost gets called resilience, and it's handed to the wrong person.
Who broke the social contract?
Politicians say the social contract is broken and point at benefit claimants. Fifty years of a shrinking wage share, zero-hours work and a jobs market that is barely hiring point somewhere else.
Confidence at work is made and unmade by design
Confidence isn't brought to work. It's made and unmade there, by the design of the job and by the first manager. What our community and the Civil Service show.
Access to Work is crumbling, and a year on it's worse
In July 2025 I wrote that Access to Work was being quietly dismantled. A year on, the NAO, the Public Accounts Committee and DWP's own letters prove it.
We count work-related stress. We stopped asking why.
HSE counts 964,000 workers with work-related stress, depression or anxiety. Its data on what causes it averages 2009 to 2012. We measure the damage, not the cause.
Mental health training doesn't need to understand your industry
New clients often ask for training built around their sector. Construction says it loudest. But knowing your industry was never the missing piece.
You cannot destroy jobs and demand more people work
Richard Murphy names the contradiction in UK employment policy: suppress jobs, then blame the people who can't find them. I've lived both ends of this one.
Loneliness, neoliberalism and 'enough' at work
Richard Murphy says loneliness comes from internalised neoliberalism. Work is where that lesson is taught most clearly, and 'enough' is a fix any workplace can choose.
AI at work isn't a revolution. It's a vacuum.
Four in five UK workers use AI. Fewer than one in twenty use it well. That gap isn't about your people. It's the training, rules and permission nobody gave them.
'Job hugging' isn't fear. It's a rational read of a broken deal.
HR's new phrase blames the worker again. People aren't clinging to jobs out of fear. They've looked at what else is out there and found nothing better.
'It is a killer': what a learner taught me about burnout
A learner who reached burnout twice could name every protective habit. Knowing your non-negotiables isn't the same as being able to use them.