We All Have Mental Health, All of the Time - with Nick Taylor

"When we think about mental health, the first thing is we must understand that it's something we all have all of the time. So from the moment you are born to the moment you die, you have mental health. There isn't a moment on earth that any human being has ever been alive and they've not had mental health.”

October is Mental Health Awareness Month, and on this very special episode of Practice Well(Being) we shared deep conversation with Nick Taylor, co-founder of Unmind and former lead clinical psychologist with the NHS. Nick and his team at Unmind are transforming mental health and well-being in the workplace with their platform that helps drive performance for organizations, while empowering people to lead healthier, happier lives.

Nick is incredibly inspiring, with a background and story that draw you into the human experience – what is it that makes us who we are? This is a conversation that explores destigmatizing mental health, the variables that impact our mental health and well-being, the role our place of work plays in our mental health, and the critical role of data to measure and manage baselines and progress.

You can find Nick on LinkedIn or at nick.taylor@unmind.com.  You can connect with Nita on LinkedIn. You can connect with Becky on LinkedIn, Instagram or at her website – www.untanglehappiness.com  

Transcript

In this week's episode of Practice Wellbeing, Becky and I speak with Nick Taylor, a former lead clinical psychologist with the NHS and the co-founder of an amazing company called Unwind, which is on an incredible and important mission to transform mental health in the workplace. You know, there are always people who you can point to that cross your path at just the right time to inspire you to take the next step in your journey.

Nick, although he didn't know it at the time, was one of those people for. I was so inspired by his story and work to help the world better understand and nurture and celebrate mental health that I knew I wanted to, even if in just a small way be part of that mission. In this conversation, we talk about the stigma.

Around mental health. Nick talks about all of the variables that impact our wellbeing, and I love that he so eloquently shares that he's never met any person in black and white. We all have mental health all of the time. It's the very best part about being a human being. As we all continue to build awareness around mental health and as we dig deeper into those very elements that make us who we are, we can empower ourselves, our teams, and the world around us to lead healthier, happier lives in honor of World Mental Health Day on October 10th, and every day that we celebrate our mental health and wellbeing.

Please enjoy this conversation with Nick Taylor. Thanks for listening in. Let's get to it.

Nick Taylor, it is just so wonderful to have you here today. Thank you so much for coming.

Nick Taylor, it is just so wonderful to have you here today. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having, So I wanted to kind of kick things off by saying that, um, I discovered you in the midst of lockdown in May of 2020 when we were both participating in, um, Rob Stevenson's. G 24 Mental health summit that was virtual.

And I heard you speak about your mission and passion to, you know, transform mental health in the workplace. And I remember just thinking at the time, listening to you, listening to your story, just sign me up right now. Like, that's what I was thinking. Um, and you sort of started doing your work, though. I recognize this.

You started doing the work that you do. Before the rest of the world kind of became woke to it. Like before it was such like a hot topic. Um, I don't wanna call it a trend because I don't think it's a trend. I think it's here to stay, but before it was top of mind for everybody. And so I think like what I'd love to start with is just for you to share a little bit about, you know, your backstory, because I want others to experience what I experienced when I first heard you.

Well, thank you so much for the kind words, and I'm very, very happy to give some background. So I'm a clinical psychologist and prior to Unmind was in the National Health Service in the uk, um, as part of a leadership team in the nhs. And what got me there was a, a lifelong passion for the topic of mental health.

And, and that came about because I, I grew up with three sisters. My middle sister Jessica is Down syndrome. So from a very young age, I was aware that people are treated differently by those around them and, and also see the world differently and experience a different life. And, and that instilled in me a real fascination with what is it that makes us who we are.

Um, so fast forward about 20 or so years, and I was a volunteer with the Samaritans, which is a crisis helpline in the uk and that, that showed me kind of the value that just listening well. Provide to people. And, um, when I graduated from my music degree, which is my first degree, I, I quickly realized I wanted to go back into the world of healthcare and psychology and did a degree in psychology, a doctorate in clinical psychology.

And then when I graduated, got the role in the nhs. And, and what happened over that time is that I. I realized that there were, there were two frustrations in my life. One was in my role, I was responsible for a team where we had high levels of burnout. We had, um, a challenge attracting people into the team.

Uh, we had a challenge, uh, retaining people in the team, uh, because of the workplace culture, uh, and the being toxic to wellbeing. Um, and also simultaneous to that, I realized in my clinical practice that I was having to put people along, wait. And therefore not meeting people early enough with their mental ill health.

And that made it harder to help those people get better. And, and these two experiences together really showed me that there was an opportunity, um, to get further upstream with our mental healthcare and move to a more preventative model, um, so that we don't leave people waiting before they get the right care at the right time, but also that that approach should take place in the workplace where people spend so much of their time.

There's a real opportunity to both give people an environment that helps 'em flourish, but also, uh, and that prevents problems, but it also provides the business. So that gave me the, the kind of the insight that there was an opportunity to. Both take a, uh, a more proactive approach towards mental health, uh, and get into a preventative mindset rather than a reactive mindset, but also apply that approach within the workplace because organizations have both, um, a big issue, which is that their people are not well or, or str or struggling, and that impacts on business performance, but also, Their people are their most valuable asset.

So investing in their people gives them an opportunity to not only have flourishing employees, but flourishing businesses. Um, so I left the NHS six years ago, co-founded on mine. Um, and we've been on an incredible journey since then. You really have. Um, but I can imagine that it hasn't been an easy journey, right?

And I. I have this sort of sense because I think I'm experiencing it now in the conversations that I have with, you know, leaders in the industry that we work in, which is the legal industry. But I think that this applies kind of across the board to any industry. There is this challenge of having to deal with the stigma around mental health and that.

There's such an association of the term mental health as associated with ill mental health and kind of changing that, destigmatizing it. So I've found that people will often try to avoid speaking about it. And I'm curious about like, how do you talk about it? How do you think about this? How do we start to do a better job of accelerating.

The process of destigmatization and isn't that frustrating, Right? That there's stigma on mental health is, isn't that crazy? Mm-hmm. , because when you, when you think about it, we have as a human being, Um, the most amazing, uh, thing in, in the whole animal kingdom. In our head, we have a brain, which is just the coolest thing.

Uh, it's the most incredible thing the natural world has ever created. All of the time we have from the moment we're born to the moment we die, we have this amazing thing in our head. It's like the best computer ever built, you know, It's a profoundly wonderful. And through our brain we are able to think, um, we are able to connect with people to communicate.

We're able to feel all the emotions that we feel we're able to achieve the goals that we set. Like it's great privilege and mental health is not. It's not recognized how wonderful that is. That is our mental health, what I've just described. It's like that mental health is a wonderful part of being a human being.

It's arguably the most wonderful thing that any human will ever have, and yet we've ended up in a place where it's understood to mean a set of problems. When people hear the term mental health, they actually think about mental ill health. They actually think. The scary things that can happen when it goes wrong, which is odd because it's not how we think about other areas of health.

Like if you hear the term dental health, you are more likely to think of a perfect pet set of teeth. If you hear the term physical health, you're more likely to think of chiseled six pack or a picture of someone athletic in kind of sportswear. You know, like those images, those positive images come to mind.

E, even when you sit in the dentist chair to have dental care done to you like to have a filling the pictures around you are not pictures of bad teeth. The pictures are pictures of perfect teeth. When you buy toothpaste, it's not a picture of rotting teeth on the front. It's a picture of perfect. Teeth.

And yet with mental health, the same with gyms and things, and yet with mental health, the most common image is kind of a black and white image of someone holding their head in their hands. And through all my years of clinical practice, I've never met anyone in black and white. So I dunno why we started kind of using in those images anyway.

And so it's a massive, um, it's a massive misstep from our societies around the world that we don't talk about it. But it, it's not to say there isn't reason. I, I think part of the reason is that, um, with all the great things I've just described, What also goes alongside that is a, a real complexity. Mental health is a complex topic, uh, and it's not as straightforward as teeth.

It's not as straightforward as our bodies. And, and you can see that actually even in, um, if you look at trends in, in physical. Health science. So if you look at like medicine for cancer or for diabetes, like the progress over the past 50 years is far end strip the progress we've made with mental health treatment for illness.

Um, and that partly speaks to the complexity of mental health as a topic. Not only is the paradigm confused and we don't have. Perfect diagnostic system, but we also don't have a perfect treatment system. Um, and therefore it's quite a scary topic when it goes wrong. Um, and I think the fear is partly what keeps the stigma there.

That said, I also think we, we are going through a transformational period in society, and I think that stigma is lifting. And I think five years ago, the way people talk about mental health in the workplace, for example, Fundamentally different how we talk about it today. And I think everyone in the mental health community and every advocate of mental health should be immensely proud of that transformation that we've seen.

And we are just getting started. I genuinely believe we would keep this momentum. The next generation won't have stigma on this topic. And it just strikes me as you're making those comparisons, right? That when I, when we talk about mental health, we look at people and we don't look at them and say, Oh wow, that person is so mentally healthy.

Right? Mm-hmm. , where you might look at somebody and say, Wow, that person is so physically healthy, at least from the outside looking in. But we do notice about mental health is when somebody is not healthy, and so we're just like trained to sort of spot the negative and assume that everybody is operating in the positive, which as we know is not reality.

Right. I also liked what you said about, um, how you've never met anybody in black and white, and that you sort of bring up this concept that it's actually. You know, mental health and wellbeing is not really a binary thing. It's not you are or you aren't. It is kind of an ebb and flow every single day, constantly on a spectrum.

Any given individual is on that spectrum any given day. Perhaps that's another reason why it's, it's, there's that sort of fear associated with, with how do we, how do we deal with this or cope with this. But I like something that, you know, Becky, actually, you had said this in a previous conversation that we had had, is how do you keep yourself sort of in that positive affect balance?

Of being kind of more tipped to the side of the spectrum where you are feeling better or you're more inclined to thrive or you're flourishing more. And I think that it speaks to what you were saying, Nick, about your mission at the start of this, around getting into this proactive space and preventative space of mental health.

And you know, I think it would be helpful too, to just. Can we put some words around this? Like when we're talking about mental health, what are the components they're in? Because it is, everything is kind of connected to one another, right? Your physical health impacts your mental health, your emotional wellbeing impacts your mental health, like it's all connected to one another.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. And, and I'll just draw on the purpose of Unmind as well, because I think it, it's, it's linked really to something I think we need to do in this topic. Um, the purpose of Unmind is to create a world where mental health is universally understood, nurtured, and celebrated.

And those three. Words are so important to us and to, to me personally, cuz I like, we must increase understanding our mental health. That's the first step and that really helps to break the stigma. Uh, we must nurture it. We must look after our mental health. I think many of us are better at routinely looking after our physical and dental health and, and not applying the same behavioral patterns to our mental health.

And then we must celebrate mental health because it's only in the celebration. Of a topic that you get people to engage and really embrace it. And I make jokes about how we sell toothbrushes and gym memberships, but actually the mental health community must learn from that approach because it, it has, it does work.

And then it, it answers to your question then directly. Um, when we think about mental health, the first thing is we must understand that it's something we all have all of the time. So from the moment you are born to the moment you. You have mental health. Uh, there isn't a moment on earth that any human being has ever been alive and they've not had mental health.

Right? So, so that's the first thing. So you can't get away from it, even if you don't want to talk about it. The second thing is to recognize that it's, it's a multifaceted thing, our mental health. Um, and what I mean by that, there's, there's a model that's very popular called the bio psychosocial model in, in healthcare systems.

And we often talk about that as a whole person approach to mental health. And what that means is that, There's actually lots of different variables that will impact on our mental health, and we'll determine where you fall on that spectrum that you are talking about. And, um, it could be biological factors such as your sleep, your nutrition, your age, your disease status, how physically fit you are, things like that.

Um, it could be psychological things, which are personality types, your core beliefs about the world, your natural nature around gravitating towards negative thoughts or positive thoughts, things like that. Or it could be social factors such as your housing, your finance, your, uh, sense of purpose in your workplace, for example.

And this, these three kind of major parts of your life will then determine how you are doing on any given day. Um, and some of us are more, um, likely to have a more positive mindset than others. Some of us are more likely to have great physical health than others, et cetera, but we must understand that breadth to understand how to think about providing support around mental.

Well, and I think you make a made a really important part at the very beginning of that, which is still new to some people. This notion that we can be working on our mental health when it is healthy. When it is not ill, when it is good and not just working on it when we have ill mental health and that actually the time to work on it  for the greatest result or the biggest payoff is during health.

Yeah. Well, again, like, and there are limitations to the dentist comparison, but it does work. You think about, um, the most common thing a dentist ever says. To you, or at least to me, is just keep brushing your teeth, you know? Mm-hmm. , like, you don't only brush your teeth when your teeth go wrong, you brush them every single day twice a day.

Right. And we need to take that same approach to our mental health, and that actually, um, is easier than it sounds. Mm-hmm. , it's, it's partly continuous learning. We must learn about ourselves. We must learn about how our brain works, learn about topics that affect our wellbeing, like how to sleep better, for example, how to communicate more effectively.

How to kind of quieten an inner critic, things like that. That's learning, that's really important. But also connecting with other people is really valuable. Just a phone call, uh, to a loved one, or making time to be present. And people talk a lot about mindfulness and meditation, but, and that might not be for everyone, and it can be highly valuable for those that love it and embrace it, but it can also mean just noticing.

Noticing positive things, practicing gratitude. Um, you know, as you walk past a tree enjoying the color of the leaf as you, um, kind of wake up in the morning enjoying a song and really being present with it. So, so actually being proactive with our mental health is easier to get into our routine than, than perhaps we realize.

But it does require intentionality in our behavior. Yeah. We're just not taught how to brain brush. Exactly. Brain brush. What a wonderful term. I love it. Well, I wanna actually go back to something that you said around kind of the mission at Unmind, which is to universally understand, nurture and celebrate mental health.

So I think about this sort of in two ways, right? There's how you can empower individuals to do this for themselves. Understanding it, building the literacy around it, building in a practice around it and being proactive. But there's an onus to that, right? Organizations can provide things, provide tools that can help to support that.

Um, but the onus is, is largely then upon the individual to say, Okay, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that brain brush every two day or two, you know, two times a day, or whatever the case may be. There is equally, I think, important the. What the organization is doing at an organizational level to help, to support and contribute to that, that bears some of the burden on the culture of the organization as opposed to putting just the onus upon the individual.

Um, and I know that Unminded, you have a philosophy around that and I think that it's, um, it's just really important to kind of bring in those perspectives of wellbeing in the workplace. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about, you know, when you're working with companies and organizations, what does that look.

Yeah, I think, uh, thank you for asking the question cause I think it's such an important point here. I, I remember when I used to sit in the therapy room and the person sitting in therapy opposite me would be describing their lives. And those might have poor housing, not the right finance in a bad job, abusive.

And I, the real challenge in those situations is just that, wow, how can you be well with that happening? And to an extent, the same applies to the workplace, really, which is organizations want their employees to flourish for all the reasons we've discussed, but they can only expect that to happen if they're providing the environment in which it can happen.

So it's a little bit like, to take another analogy, if you took a seed to a plant and you put that seed in the wrong. Soil with the wrong amount of water and the wrong amount of light. You can't expect that seed to grow into the plant that it could be. But if you plant that seed in the right soil with the right water and the right light, it can become the plant that you are dreaming of.

And human beings are not dissimilar. We put a human being a bit more complex in some ways, but you put a human being into a workplace that is equipped to help them flourish and they will be more likely to flourish. So that's why we can't just take this whole person approach, but we have to this whole organization approach, and we have to think about, well, from the board.

All the way to the latest employee walking into the door. How are we talking, thinking about mental health? How are we helping to normalize? How are we educating? How are we breaking the stigma? How are we using data to understand where we're at? So we have to really be thinking whole person, whole organization.

And what we critically want is to make sure. Whichever of those things you're focusing on, you're getting the right care at the right time because that's what gets the right outcomes, and you only know that by providing measurement and by doing measurement, and because that data provides the insights you need.

I'm so glad that you brought up the data point because I'm kind of a data nerd when it comes to this stuff, and I lo I love the data element of it. Here's the thing that I, a point that I really wanna make, especially, you know, for our listeners out there who, who tend to be more in the, in the legal arena, I wanna make the case, don't be afraid of the data, right?

That it almost doesn't matter. I think at this point, like when you start to collect this information, Where we're starting from is to create a baseline, right, so that we can start to show that we are making improvements here. And I don't know, I just feel, I feel really strongly about the fact that we shouldn't be waiting necessarily for others to tell us that we have to do it, or when there's more formal governance in place for it, but that it's an such an opportune time right now to start collecting some of that baseline information so that we can start.

To measure and manage and show improvement, um, when that governance actually does come into place. I mean, I'm so, I'm such a convert to everything you've just said. You know, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. And, and mental health requires the same approach to data that we apply to any other metric in the business.

Um, and because what we all want to do is to further this topic, we want to demonstrate that actually. By investing in the health and wellbeing of our people, we can see meaningful change within the business. And, and to quantify that we need data, um, and the data will show the results. And, and, and actually businesses can then use that to their advantage, not only in continuing to create even more healthy work environments, but actually to attract the best talent in the market, to retain the best talent in the market.

And so I'm, I'm fully. A really quick little thought I had as you're talking is I know that like in the habit science world, there's even some, I don't know if it's data or just sort of anecdotal evidence to suggest that when we measure things, we affect positive change in those areas just by the measurement of them.

So it's like there's this added frosting to this whole idea of data collection that just by doing the exercise, regardless of what these the results are, we're paying more attention to it and therefore getting better results or outcomes in that. So I just wanted to add that I, I really agree and on, on mind.

We've always really prioritized, uh, measurement. And we have a, what's called the UN online index, which is allows us to, to understand how an individual is and then sign person into the right content and, and similarly with workplaces as well. Um, it's so critical. It's so critical to the future of workplace wellbeing.

That was my next question. What does, what do you think that the future of wellbeing does look like? I think that it's a really exciting future. Um, but I, it's a necessary and urgent future because what we know is that, um, we know that stress is a, um, potential. Predictor of somebody's likelihood to become unwell with their mental health.

So, uh, we know stress is an issue and we also know that financial pressure is a great, uh, predictor of somebody's, um, mental health and wellbeing. And if you think about the world we've just been through, uh, that we've been through covid, we've been through lockdowns, uh, health pandemic that nobody in this, uh, generation's ever seen, we are now in a world with enormous political instability.

Uh, with economic and stability that hasn't been seen for generations. Um, so we actually have a situation where employees are already under enormous, unprecedented pressure because of the last few years and going into a period which is gonna continue that pressure on their wellbeing. So the first thing is, I think it's going to remain an absolute business critical topic.

Um, and I think that there is. Good will and strategic prioritization amongst enough stakeholders to make some really exciting things happen. But in amongst that challenging environment I'm describing, I think there's genuine opportunity, and I think that that opportunity is in the production of stigma.

The conversation is easier to have now than it's ever been before. I think there is a move towards a more holistic understanding. Of mental health and wellbeing. And I think there is a, uh, a drive towards recognizing the role that the culture around wellbeing can have on the employee as well. So we talk a lot about, you know, making sure that wellbeing can happen in the flow of work.

So it's really easily accessible, um, wherever you are, meeting the right people at the right time. Um, but also that it's the flow of care so that people are getting the right care for whatever they need, wherever they sit on the mental health spectrum. But I'm very, very excited about, about how the innovation that's happening is gonna transform the, the landscape over the coming years.

But data sits right at the heart of it. Mm-hmm. , I also wanna add one thing to that, that in that opportunity is so much, you know, as we think about, you know, future of work and there's so much that we don't know. About the problems that need to be solved in the future, and there's only so much that technology and algorithms and things like that will be able to solve for that.

What we need is healthy, empathetic minds to understand. Different solutions to these new problems that we're going to have, and to that, to the extent that we can support those healthy minds enables us to support that necessary innovation for the future as well. I really agree with that. I think the, the wrong way of thinking about wellbeing at work is that individuals should have wellbeing done to them because all of their wellbeing issues sit with inside them.

That's the wrong way of thinking about wellbeing at work. The right way of thinking about it is you have an individual who sits within a system, um mm-hmm . And that system needs to facilitate that individual to grow. Um, and in order for that to happen, we need compassionate leaders. We need leaders who understand the topic of mental health and wellbeing.

And for that to happen, we must provide continuous education to help them understand the topic better, so that they are able to provide the environment for their employees to flourish Perfectly said. Perfectly said. I think I know that we could continue this conversation, you know, or I could continue this conversation for sure with you for hours and hours and hours.

But, um, in the interest of time here to let you get on with, with the rest of your day. Um, I think we're gonna close out with some rapid fire questions, right, Becky? Perfect. Do you want to start or do you want me to start? I can go either way. Go ahead. Okay. I'm going to kick it off with Nick. What is something.

This year that you unexpectedly came to realize or learn that has changed your perspective on things? I think for me it's the realization that. Despite there being a acknowledgement and recognition of the importance of the system that sits around an individual as being a determinant of their health, we've known that a long time.

It hasn't been acted on properly in relation to the topic of wellbeing, and I don't think I had appreciated until recently quite how far away from being realized that really was in relation to employment. And on a personal level, I went on holiday with my family and rented a little boat and had a great day out on the boat.

And then when I return the boat realized I was meant to have a license to drive it. Uh,  personal. You survived. I survived. I survived. So my question is, I wanna know what your, what one of your favorite brain brushes. You know, I have a few. Um, it's spending time with family and loved ones. I love music. Um, and music really elevates or meets me where my mood's at.

And I love exercising. Um, particularly running in tennis. I love learning. So reading, um, and I love playing chess. Chess is an interesting one because I've, I know how I'm talking about about measurement. I know how stressed I am or how tired I am by how well I play chess. It has a real impact on my ability to win a game.

Interesting. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for this, um, conversation. I've appreciated it and I know the folks listening will appreciate it too, if they wanna track you down or learn more about Unmind and we'll put links in the show notes. Tell me where they can find you. They can find me, um, on LinkedIn and they can find me on my email, which is nick@unmine.com.

Be happy to speak with anyone. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I mean, what you're doing is just so important and I appreciate you so much. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me on. It's been lovely speaking with you both.