Hi Friend,

I’m excited to share with you that the Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation has released our first piece of original, peer-reviewed research on the timely topic of mental health and wellness in the workplace. This report is part one of a three phase research project.

You can read the full report here: www.douglascoldwelllayton.ca/mental-health-wellness-report.

Mental health distress in Canada is growing, unevenly spread, and costly. Research gaps limit our ability to understand exactly how work and socioeconomic factors affect our mental well-being.

The report reviews recent scientific research on workplace mental health finding several conditions known to cause worker stress and anxiety are converging on workers at airports and hospitals:

• working through pandemic outbreaks
• excessive jobs demands
• feelings of worker powerlessness
• harassment and violence from clients, patients or customers

These factors have collided in air travel and ERs like a perfect storm. The ability to retain staff is no accident. In addition to conditions resulting from understaffing, the Foundation’s report recognizes a range of additional workplace conditions driving worker mental health distress.

“From our study it’s clear, your work environment affects your mental health,” said Tom Parkin, the report’s author and worker health and safety expert. “The findings are interesting because they tell us Canadians’ mental wellbeing can be improved. Managers who want to retain staff have a job to do.”

Please read and share this report, Friend. Canadians need to see our findings.

The mission of the Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation is to inform and provoke important Canadian policy discussions, including in the area of health care.

If you or someone you know is dealing with distress caused by their place of work and would like to share their story, we would be interested in connecting with them.

Thanks and stay tuned for more updates on this topic.

Josh Bizjak
Executive Director