Canadian HR Reporter

Canadian HR RepoRteR december 15, 2014 14 FeAtures Labour law research just got faster, easier and more comprehensive. LabourSource™ on WestlawNext® Canada combines the most robust collection of grievance arbitrations with court and board decisions, expert commentary, legislation and collective bargaining-related content – with Canada's most advanced search engine. A single search delivers the content you're looking for, whether it's case law, legislation, commentary, or legal memos. You can then filter your results to get exactly what you need. With LabourSource, you'll always be confident that your research is complete and that you haven't missed anything. Experience the benefits • Prepare winning grievance arbitrations and labour board applications • Successfully negotiate favourable collective agreements • Stay up to date on the latest labour-related decisions, industrial relations and economic news Legal content that is labour focused, not labour intensive Introducing LabourSource™ on WestlawNext® Canada See the LabourSource advantage View a demo at westlawnextcanada.com/laboursource 00224EP-A47770 HealtH & Safety How would you react? Mental health prevention, intervention can help when someone 'behaves strangely' By Mark Henick w e've all been there: you're going about your daily business, just doing your job as you do every day, when you encounter someone behaving strangely. In that moment, you make a series of assumptions. e caricature of a rambling homeless person ex- periencing a mental illness, for example, may have just popped inexplicably into your mind. at's how your brain works. It filters and organizes the input we receive in such a way as to make it into something comprehensible, as quickly as possible — usually according to prior experience and learning. e ability to assess and judge situations quickly, especially un- known ones, has grown from evo- lutionary necessity. It is essentially a defence mechanism, designed to keep us safe — to defend us from potential harm. In that sense, it is perfectly normal. However, how this information is organized may or may not re- flect the objective reality. is is especially the case when there are unknown factors involved. e brain can, and often does, fill in missing information. It can insert an experience into our per- ception that was never actually there — usually a psychological one, but occasionally a physical one. It does this because it makes the circumstance more under- standable to us. ere is a level of comfort in the feeling that we understand. Understanding underpins cer- tainty and certainty is safe. An individual who is truly psy- chologically healthy and safe can more or less adapt to additional input. She can flexibly assimilate and accommodate new informa- tion with her existing understand- ing as it comes. To varying degrees, I've not met a single person who can do this perfectly at all times. Consider a young man who happens to experience extreme and acute anxiety in crowds of people. He's in a retail store that unexpectedly becomes very busy, perhaps as a result of a big sale. Panicked, the young man asks for help from a nearby sales associate. Not realizing what the young man is experiencing, she tells him to calm down as the crowd closes in around him. e young man becomes con- fused, erratic, hurried — all in response to his intense fear. He desperately attempts to escape to a place of safety. In the process, he knocks down an elderly woman and she shouts with pain. e woman's adult son reacts based on the limited information available to him. He reacts aggres- sively, assuming the young man is attacking. He shoves the young man. Already having an aversion to the close physical proximity of strangers, the young man engages to defend himself. A fight ensues. e sales associate nearby has observed the entire situation. She's never been trained in how to recognize the signs of a possible mental health crisis. Her manager has never been trained on why developing this capacity to notice episodic mental illness is as important as noticing the possible signs of a heart attack or an allergic reaction. In fact, the manager may not even realize mental illness is sta- tistically far more likely to be en- countered, in the workplace and in everyday life. She certainly didn't realize that by promot- ing mental health and engaging mental illness with greater con- textual understanding, harm can often be reduced or prevented altogether. If you observed this scene in your workplace, how would you react? e manager calls security. Af- ter giving the information there was a fight and an injury, a police officer and a paramedic arrive on the scene. Neither the officer nor the para- medic realizes (or believes) that people who experience a mental health problem or illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. Neither has been given adequate training in effective de-escalation or intervention techniques. ey handcuff the young man and give medical attention to the elderly woman. ey attempt to disperse the onlooking crowd, for reasons of image and liability. e young man, meanwhile, is traumatized by being shackled to his fear, figuratively and literally. Stories provide answers ese kinds of stories do not fully capture the complexity of real life. Encountering mental illness on the ground is anything but straightforward, and the same is often as or more true for mental health generally. However, making an attempt at appreciating the context of each story as it unfolds provides us with that ever important ad- ditional information. When we are psychologically healthy and safe, we're more likely to have the mental flexibility required to assimilate and accommodate this information into our previ- ous understanding, and to react accordingly. We're still far from the ideal but the great benefit of complex stories is there are so many po- tential opportunities for effec- tive promotion, prevention and intervention. Employees of all levels and sec- tors develop and practise these skills in workplaces that actively cultivate and integrate psycho- logical health and safety into the way they do business. And sometimes it only takes just one person, making one de- cision, to change everything. Imagine if you were that per- son. How would you react? Mark Henick is the program man- ager for Mental Health Works, a program of the Canadian Men- tal Health Association, Ontario, which builds capacity within work- places to address issues relating to mental health. He can be reached @markhenick or, for more informa- tion, visit www.mentalhealthworks. ca or call (800) 875-6213. eaP Planning for risk Health-risk assessments can be valuable benefit for executives By Yolanda Billinkoff c ancer was a problem robert had failed to an- ticipate. like most ex- ecutives, he was overstretched, with nobody to step in for him if he suddenly needed time off. he figured he would schedule an ap- pointment with his family doc- tor if anything changed. en robert discovered his company provided the management team with a health-risk assessment, so he had one done. A highly suspicious nodule was found on the ultrasound image of Robert's abdomen. Consequently, he was booked for a CT scan at a nearby hospital. at scan re- vealed the nodule was renal cell carcinoma — kidney cancer. Robert consulted with one of the clinic's urologists and eventu- ally his medical team removed his kidney. Afterward, he wasn't un- der any obligation to tell his com- pany about his health situation — all the medical information was confidential. Nevertheless, Robert shared his health situation and worked with his management team to develop a plan to manage his temporary health-related ab- sences, with little overall impact on the company. What, how, why Screening for cancers and other potentially life-threatening condi- tions at privately run health clinics is a perquisite many companies in Canada and around the world are providing to key personnel with increasing regularity. A health-risk assessment — also called an executive health assessment or comprehensive health assessment — is a thor- ough medical evaluation focused on a preventive proactive pro- tocol. Consisting of 12 to 15 so- phisticated diagnostic tests, the assessments are performed in state-of-the-art facilities by a team of medical experts. Clients feel more like hotel guests than hospital patients crammed among sick people. Medical results can be ready the same day as the assessment or up to one week later, depend- ing on the private clinic. Should the assessment turn up any health concerns, a referral team will help arrange specialist appoint- ments and interpret results. e health-risk assessment ends with a detailed report outlining rec- ommendations for future health success. About two in five Canadians will develop cancer in their life- time, and one in four will die of the disease, according to the Canadi- an Cancer Society. e incidence is higher among men: Roughly 46 per cent of will get cancer. In 2013, the Medcan Clinic in screeNING > pg. 17

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