Mental health, personal life, and work life balance. One thing I have not been able to see in this part of the world is a healthy work life balance, and it looks like we are fine with it. Work so creeps into our activities that a lot of us spend minutes and hours doing work at home or in the car instead of us leaving the work at the office, while a lot of people battle with home problem instead of leaving the home at the door before entering into the office. Is it really possible to have a healthy work-life balance?
Let's discuss work-life balance. We are at a point where what we seek is growth, and to get this growth, it can be very difficult to differentiate work from life especially for someone who is ambitious or who wants to climb the ladders. I have seen this problem with people who are pursuing something and need to get result or climb a particular hierarchical position within a given point.
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Different people have different level of handling things and it looks like this work-life balance thing is more of a personal endeavor. This is because the level at which A would be able to handle work stress without breaking or having a mental breakdown is not the same way B will handle it. Mental health is more of a subjective thing because it is ones ability to be alive and be well mentally without putting too much stress to a point of break. We are a social being, and a lot of what we do affects our ability to thrive on a daily from church, club, activities and so on. It is a combination of your biological well being, and your environmental well being.
When it comes to work especially in countries like Nigeria, everyone is shouting mental health, but not everyone believes it especially at work. I have visited a lot of work places and I have seen that they are very toxic places, so I wonder how their employees survive. Another problem is the people themselves. A lot of people just utter the word mental health but not many understand what it entails. Telling someone to visit a psychiatrist in this part of the world can be a very big issue because they can assure that you are referring to them as being mad but in reality it is not so. This is due to the way psychiatrists have been labeled.
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Then, the problem is associated with both the employers and the employees. Majority of the time, employers do not believe in mental health, or work-life balance, they just want to see that you get tasks done, so the believe system isn't there while on the hand, the employee do not even speak up about it. The hustle culture is another reason why a lot of people do not watch their mental health. Always looking for how to make money at all times is not a good way to maintain work-life balance.
With all this I have mentioned, it leads to stress which can be good for you but then when it becomes too much, it can be terrible for your health. When stress begins to make one feel irritable, exhaustion, angry at all time, affect sleep, affect mode and process of thought and so on, then you should start to see signs that your mental health is already being affected.
Prolonged stress in the body can lead to a host of negative things in the body such as weakened immune system, heart disease, diabetes, and other health related problems. When it comes to work-life balance in our world, both the employer and the employee are at fault and the earlier we are able to learn that while we want to climb the ladders
FOR FURTHER READING
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-at-work
https://amfmtreatment.com/work-life-balance-and-mental-health/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9819779/
https://mhanational.org/resources/work-life-balance/
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/a-z-topics/work-life-balance