Understand

A recent study of job applicants showed that writing about their experiences of anxiety and depression on LinkedIn negatively affected the evaluator’s impression of their work personality traits – that they had reduced emotional stability and conscientiousness but no effect on their work performance ability. It also found that then discussing the mental health experiences with the job applicants enhanced their opinion of job emotional stability, but not conscientiousness.

Many people feel that they need some form of support for their mental health but, for a variety of reasons, they don’t want to speak to a professional face to face.  So they may look at self-help. There are a wide range of self-help sources for mental health from books, YouTube videos, and online programmes such as Balanced People. So is self-help as good as it is seeing someone one-to-one?

Balanced People resources are based on CBT – Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.  The theory around CBT is that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are interconnected and influence each other. Negative or unhelpful thoughts can contribute to negative emotions and unhealthy coping strategies, creating a vicious cycle.