T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Level Up Consultants owner Mandy McIntyre helps Belmont County businesses destigmatize mental health in the workplace.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Mandy McIntyre wants to overcome the stigma surrounding mental health in the workplace and help local businesses and their employees thrive.

The owner of Level Up Consultants spoke at the monthly Belmont County Safety Council meeting. This month’s meeting was aimed at addressing seasonal depression as well as mental health in general in the workplace. Representatives of more than 70 different area businesses were in attendance at the St. Clairsville Recreation Center to hear McIntyre address the issues.

McIntyre spoke for just under an hour and touched on a wide variety of topics, such as what challenges people suffering from mental illness face on a daily basis. She said the goal of the meeting was to raise awareness around mental health and destigmatize mental health concerns in an effort to save lives.

Her presentation slogan was “It takes more than a hard hat to keep a head safe.”

“Basically what I and my company do is we help your company’s culture and leadership teams to help you recruit, engage, and retain employees in the safest and healthiest environment you can possibly have,” McIntyre said.

For most of McIntyre’s career, she worked in construction and said she created Level Up Consultants after seeing her longtime friend and coworker die from an overdose after years of struggling with addiction.

“He was just the sweetest guy, the best guy ever, and he just happened to have a substance use disorder, which is a clinical illness,” McIntyre said. “A disease is a disease, whether it’s diabetes or it’s a substance use order.”

She added that there’s a difference between empowering and enabling someone with a substance use disorder.

“The stigma with substance use disorder is that a lot of people enable that, so I just want to make it very clear that it is a disease like any other illness,” McIntyre said. “You can empower people to get better, but you can also enable them to get worse, so the stigma with that is a little bit different than just general mental health.”

She added that her friend’s death made her reevaluate how she looked at mental health and made her ponder whether she could have prevented his death.

“Could I have prevented his death? I don’t know. Can I help prevent other deaths? Probably, so that’s why I was really compelled to get into this space and talk about it more,” she said.

McIntyre then switched gears and spoke to the crowd about mental health in the workplace.

“Mental health includes our emotional, psychological and social well-being. It affects how we make choices, how we show up for work, how we handle our relationships, and how we handle stress,” she said. “Stress is very relative. What is stressful to me may not be stressful to you and vice versa. So the triggers are different for everybody, and it’s really hard sometimes for people to understand how mental health comes about because it may not affect you the same way. It’s very individualized and very subjective.”

She added that when she speaks about mental health challenges, she’s using it as an umbrella term that covers everything. She said it can refer to early signs and symptoms, worsening signs, or symptoms of crisis. According to McIntyre, the symptoms of crisis also may differ and can include anything life-threatening such as suicidal thoughts, severe drug or alcohol use, or anything else that would qualify as an emergency situation.

“Just because you have a diagnosis does not mean that you are on the worst end of the spectrum,” she said. “I have lived with depression, anxiety and ADHD most of my adult life. I have mental illness, however, I have good mental health because I take my medication, I go to therapy, I exercise, I try to eat right and I try to get my sleep — all of the things that keep me healthy and thriving.”

She reiterated that just because someone has a mental illness does not mean that they have poor mental health.

She then told attendees she believed they could identify the signs and symptoms of mental health in the workplace. She pointed to how an individual can change and how they act in the workplace. She added a few examples to consider, such as: calling off from work regularly, having relationship issues or employment issues.

McIntyre then said co-workers or employers often see these changes at work but won’t say anything because they don’t feel it is their place to ask such personal questions.

She then asked the crowd if they knew the average timespan from when an individual initially notices signs and symptoms of a mental health challenge to when they get professional medical treatment. The crowd shouted a plethora of guesses, such as six months to three years. McIntyre then informed the crowd the average is 11 years.

According to the National Library of Medicine, there is a median delay of 10 years after onset until the first contact with a general medical doctor and 11 years until the first contact with a psychiatrist.

McIntyre believes a wait that long is unacceptable, and she is striving to be a part of the initiative to close the gap between when a person first detects signs and symptoms of mental health challenges and when they receive treatment.

“We’re trying to close the gap so people get the help they need, there’s no reason to suffer in silence. It’s not a badge of honor to just bury it away because it’s going to come up one way or another, whether it’s physically with another illness or it’s mentally with depression, anxiety or a crisis such as suicidal thoughts,” McIntyre said.

Finally, she spoke about burnout.

“Burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed,” according to the World Health Organization.

McIntyre said most employees report that their workplace stress affects their personal lives, which she believes leads to burnout.

“Burnout happens when you just stop caring, you’re tapped out, and there’s just nothing left to give because all of the fuel has been burned up,” she said. “This is where we get that quiet quitting or people looking for another job because they just can’t take it anymore in their current role with the current stressors of that workplace.”

She said that more often than not, people leave a toxic boss, not a toxic company.

“There are a lot of people who are great at their jobs. They’re stars, so they get promoted and now they have to manage people,” McIntyre said. “They’re great at what they do, but they suck as a boss. They don’t know how to communicate or give clear expectations. This is where we see the stress and the burnout and their retention problems starting to happen.”

She added that managers manage but leaders influence, inspire and motivate other people to do their jobs.

“They’re two different hats. It’s not one size fits all, and that’s the problem when we’re talking about mental health. There’s just too many bad bosses out there,” McIntyre said.