At the time of writing, the ‘I am Okay AF’ account boasts 23.3k followers. That’s quite a sizable following, considering that the project was only launched in November 2023.
It’s incredibly likely that the account is only going to continue growing by leaps and bounds. Especially considering that it’s the brainchild of the team behind the massively popular ‘Thirty AF’ social media project, which has lots of experience in content creation and meme culture.
As reported by CNN, a recent poll commissioned by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) found that most employees (74%) believe that it’s okay to talk about mental health in the workplace. However, there is a caveat. Just 58% of respondents said that they would feel comfortable actually doing so.
“People are coming (into work) with a lot more than what is on their to-do list. Those stresses can affect how they’re feeling and how they perform on the job,” the National Director of Innovation at NAMI, Barb Solish, said.
“The most common reasons employees cited for feeling uncomfortable discussing their mental health at work were stigma or judgment, no one else talking about their mental health, and not wanting to seem weak,” the organization shared in a statement.
The biggest sources of stress for employees, according to the survey, were the state of the world, their jobs, their finances, their personal lives, their physical health, and then their mental health. Meanwhile, 52% of workers revealed that they felt burnt out over the past year due to their jobs.
36% of the people surveyed also noted that their jobs had a negative effect on their mental health. According to NAMI, those workers who are less comfortable talking about their mental health in the workplace are also more likely to feel burnt out and that their mental health is suffering.
Some companies and managers are taking note and tackling mental health issues however they can. HR consulting firm Mercer notes that half of all employers that they’ve surveyed have “conducted anti-stigma campaigns to help employees feel comfortable utilizing behavioral health services.”
Around a third of employers are training their managers to recognize behavioral health concerns so that they can proactively solve the issues before they become serious.
