I've been working closely within the hospitality industry for around nine years and have seen first hand the struggles of mental health issues within the trade, with both clients and friends.
Margins are slim and with increased focus on saving money, both employers and employees feel the effect of this on their mental health. Long antisocial hours, tough environmental conditions and pressures to perform are just some of the issues that hospitality professionals are fighting against on a daily basis.
Hospitality staff should be able to discuss the state of their mental health and gain support from their peers and employers. It's important that although mental health can't be seen it is regularly discussed and policies reviewed. This should be the new definition of 'badge of honour'.
My own personal experience started in a bout of depression lasting two years whilst I was in college at eighteen years old. I’d lost my direction and felt that I had no place in the world. At my worst I spent a week struggling to get out of bed and felt that I didn’t belong here anymore. My levels of anxiety were through the roof to the point where I was suffering from paranoid episodes, thinking that strangers were looking at and talking about me. As I came through this experience and started to improve my mental and physical health through exercise, creativity and diet I was still left with a niggling concern that this was something that I had suffered alone; that everyone else I saw walking around couldn’t have possibly gone through what I had experienced.