stress affects the concentration of workers and they are unable to make decisions

Diana Zapata Espinoza is a graduate in Psychology, with a postgraduate degree in cognitive Clinical Psychology from the Catholic University of Uruguay and has specialization in couples psychotherapy and linked systems.

Infomarket discussed with Diana Zapata about mental health due to the COVID-19 pandemic, how it affects the labor performance of workers in companies and the importance that employers should attach to the issue.

How much has the pandemic affected workers' mental health?

Well, the pandemic has affected a lot and has also made it clear the need to seek professional help. Workers are in situations that the pandemic has caused as bereavement processes for family losses. Right now for the reason they work from home, there is practically no separation, no discrimination can be made between working life and personal life.

So out of 10 workers, I'D say about 7 are with very high stress levels. Stress directly affects the concentration of workers and they are unable to make decisions and this decreases in the workplace. The pandemic has not only brought stress but also depression, low mood and anxiety.

Do you think that this year there will be an increase or decrease in the effect on people's mental health?

I think it will increase because in this third wave there is an increase in people with high levels of anxiety and lack of motivation that translates into depressive symptoms, in any case it will be maintained or raised, anyway.

How important is mental health in the workplace?

It is essential, from the neurological side, stress, depression, anxiety, they all die in the person's body and they will influence their level of concentration. People with these problems will have less performance than those who have greater integrated mental self-care and perform activities both physical and emotional well-being.

What the pandemic has done is to make visible the little attention we pay to mental health when it is actually the axis that will sustain us so that we can carry out all our daily activities.

This is why some large companies are opting for mental health because they have realized that this allows workers' performance to be optimized.

What should companies do to get 100% out of their workers?

First, do screening and surveys to see the current state of mental health of your workers. Based on the results, it is possible to implement psychoeducational workshops, psychological counseling and emotional support lines, but not all companies do so because they do not. This is about prevention.

Then comes the intervention work that is already about to intervene in those workers who are already presenting the consequences of the same pandemic, because many of these workers say that it is because of the pandemic that they are like this.

Do these mental health problems move into the family environment?

Totally, the patients I have who are big business workers have a lot of these problems. Stress doesn't discriminate in spaces. Stress is an energy that accumulates and the person ends up taking it out in other aspects of his life, of course, in the family environment.

Is the State giving the necessary importance to mental health in the current pandemic?

Well, there's an increase in CEM, community mental health centers, but it doesn't meet the population's demand, and besides, right now, health insurance doesn't provide facilities for people to get close to, so we need to continue working to implement new centers and spaces that are accessible to the person. Because not all people have access to the Internet, so they should implement more psychological support lines and continue to work under the social contexts offered by a country like Peru.

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