Mettie Spiess is on a mission with passion: to build a culture of voice to crush mental health stigma. WELCOA’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, Sara Rauch, sits down with Mettie to discuss the very important topic of employee mental health and safety, and how organizations can eliminate the stigma.
Supporting Employees and Reducing Mental Health Stigma
Sara Rauch Hi, Mettie. How are you?
Mettie Spiess I’m wonderful thanks. How are you, Sara?
SR Very well. It is great to finally sit down with you and hear more about your incredible story and work. We also have the privilege of hearing your keynote on stigma reduction and suicide prevention at our Summit this year in San Diego! We are looking forward to that as well.
MS Thank you for having me. I’m beyond excited for Summit, so this is a great kickstart.
SR I feel like this is an incredibly timely conversation to be having. I know that myself and my community have been so rocked recently by people—and you said this really well in your blog—by people who seem to have it all, like Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, dying by suicide. It rocks us because I feel like maybe our idea of suicide is that it happens because people are lost or people have had some terrible tragedy in their lives or people don’t seem to have a sense of purpose.
I think that one of the things that’s been really hard in the conversations that I’ve been having with my friends and co-workers lately about these deaths is that, if this is something that could happen to folks who have it all, what does that mean for others and their purpose and sense of hope? I would love, since it’s so timely, to get your thoughts on why you think it is that this rocks people so much.
MS Sure. I couldn’t agree with you more. There is, I feel, a stereotype of what we think suicidal individuals are like or what people who live with mental illness are like. Like you said, often we think that they had some terrible tragedy or they’re really struggling, and it’s very apparent that they’re mentally ill or that they are considering ending their life. But the fact is suicidal thoughts and death by suicide does not discriminate.
It does not matter how much money you have in the bank, what your title is, or how much fame that you have. At the core of that thought and that illness, is that it doesn’t protect you from that, if that makes sense.
SR Yes, absolutely. And it just draws attention to the fact that suicide is such a misunderstood epidemic. But I think with the tragedy of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain recently, it’s even come to light for me more.
MS It is. That’s what’s different about suicidal grief—the questions that are left behind. One of the worst feelings is wondering if you even knew that person at all, especially if you’ve had a personal relationship. That’s something that I’ve really struggled with in my personal loss by suicide—when that person was the life of the party and they seemed to have it all and they put on such a happy face all the time. Was that not really them? What did I miss? What if I would have asked—reached out that day or answered that phone call? That’s what can really affect us as survivors.
That’s why I wrote that blog post of giving a deeper look into the thoughts behind suicide and the factors of the suicidal mind that we’ve been able to get a really great look into, or some insight, via Dr. Thomas Joiner and the several other suicidologist through the American Association of Suicidology.
I definitely encourage you to check that out. We won’t go deep into that today, but hopefully that will bring about some peace and understanding.
SR Mettie, you touched on this briefly, but you have had significant life events that have lead you to focus your passion and your life’s work, which we’re going to talk about today, on mental health and eradicating stigma. Can you give our listeners a high-level view, and talk about that now, of what really lead you here?
MS Sure. Since I’ll be digging deep into it somewhat, I’ll give a high-level snapshot of what brought me here. In 2014, I remember vividly looking into the mirror and not recognizing the person staring back and saying to my husband “How did this become my life?” I had lost a family member, someone that meant the world to me, to suicide. And as you mentioned, everything that I thought was true, my security, my world, crumbled.
When I sought help, I remember sitting on that cold examination table that we’re all familiar with, waiting for the doctor to hand down my mental health diagnosis and thinking that it was going to be my life sentence. I was terrified of what people would think if they found out the diagnosis. Will I lose my clients, my job, everything I had worked for?
That fear and that self-stigma was so strong I could feel it radiating out of my bones in that moment. Luckily, what was stronger than that fear was knowing that if I let that shame and stigma and silence win, that more precious lives would be lost to suicide. And to me, that was unacceptable.
SR That’s an incredible realization. I love that what was stronger than the fear was the opportunity that you saw to face this and actually be able to use what you learned from facing it to help other people. That’s a really incredible perspective, Mettie.
MS Thank you. I appreciate that. I wanted to get out there and change the perception of what mental illness looks like. Because you mentioned, Sara, we have an idea of what those types of people look like. But in reality, it’s me. It’s the person sitting next to you in your cubicle. It may be your son or daughter. And what that looks like is not a life sentence; you can live a full life and be successful in every aspect.
SR I’ve noticed that, as we work with health promotion professionals who are trying to address total population health of their own employees or they’re consulting with client organizations to roll out strategies, that mental health is becoming more and more central to a total holistic wellness strategy. People want to do a better job of identifying and accommodating mental health and substance abuse problems at work. What we’ve noticed is they feel like it’s a legal minefield, and they back away so much from it because they don’t know where to start or they’re afraid they’re going to do it wrong, so they don’t do it at all.
What are the most common fears that you’ve seen, or misconceptions, about talking about mental health in the context of the work place?
MS Great question. You hit the nail right on the head there. There are four main fears and misconceptions that I find in organizations that I work with—the first being that mental health is too personal. Managers or team leads often tell me, “Mettie, I’m fine talking to my guys about avoiding worksite injury and physical safety but not mental health. It’s too personal or messy. I don’t want to get into their business, etc.” But the reality is, employees are asking for the support.
They are, in some cases, begging for this support from their management and companies. I teamed with Healics Health Professionals, the largest HRA vendor in the Midwest, looking at their data from surveying 160,000 employees nationwide asking what wellness support they were in need of.
Mental health support has been in the top three requests by employees for the past three years.
The misconception of mental health being too personal to talk about in the workplace is coming from individuals feeling awkward about talking about it. It’s actually not about the employee at all.
I often hear, and, Sara, I know you hear, “Well, I already have an EAP that no one is using, so if I roll out these strategies or programs, nobody will come.” That’s a very good point. In companies that haven’t shattered that stigma surrounding mental health and EAP, it’s very underutilized. However, in companies that have created a culture of voice and have shattered the stigma, they have very high participation rates in voluntary support programs. We’ll look at a few of those companies later on, but we’re finding the opposite to be true; that they are very well utilized and well received by employees.
One of the fears that you touched on is the fear of not being qualified, or if you talk about mental health, you’ll do it wrong. So you need to be a medical professional. Here’s another way to look at that. If you were taking a stroll on the beach and out of the corner of your eye, you saw someone drowning. Would you stop and think “Do I have the right certification, or am I the most qualified person here to jump in in support?” No.
SR No, of course not.
MS No, not at all. Your instinct would kick in. You’d do anything you could to help that person. Now, I’m not saying medical intervention isn’t important and, in some cases, critical. But what I am saying is that even the experts like National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and RI International agree that peer support is highly effective in increasing the likelihood that the individual will stay employed.
It reduces their risk for hospitalization and decreases symptoms of depression. If you think about it, Sara, how many times have you reached out to a co-worker or friend before reaching out to your doctor when something was going on?
SR Absolutely. I have, and we have a culture here at WELCOA where that’s a totally acceptable thing to do, and these are the people who you do life with. So naturally you have an inclination that you want to seek support from those people you’re spending many hours a day around.
MS Absolutely. When that trust is already built, and since they’re coming to us anyway and expressing concern, whether it’s about a physical, emotional, or mental situation, we, as peers, are in a great position to truly make a difference in the lives of the people that we work with. That fourth and final fear that I hear the strongest from the HR teams that I work with is that if they address mental health that their employees will abuse mental health days or falsely claim or overclaim having depression or anxiety to receive accommodations.
In my experience, and my thought here is that the same employees that they’re concerned about taking advantage, are the employees that are falsely claiming physical illness and injuries. So, it really goes both ways. Does that make sense?
SR Yeah. Absolutely. And the way trust plays into these scenarios is very interesting. Because what we’re talking about here is an employer who needs to trust their employees more, so that when they roll these resources out, they will not believe that employees will take advantage of those resources. But then we’re also talking about, from a stigma perspective, trust that the employee has in the employer that if they go to the employer and say “I’m dealing with something,” that there won’t be negative consequences.
It just feels like it goes both ways. The absence of trust is a huge barrier to addressing mental health in the workplace effectively.
MS Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. And that fear is so strong, and I felt that in my bones, that if I do come forward, what will that mean? Will I lose my job? That often prevents people from seeking support. However, when they are treated and they do receive proper support, we’re seeing the opposite.
Employers are reaping the benefits of seeing their medical claims and disability claims go down, particularly in physical claims as well because, as you know, if we aren’t treating the root cause of the problem, which is often a mental health issue or emotional health issue, that manifests as physical conditions. So, if we get down deeper into the root, then the physical health is improving as well.
SR As you were asking me the question about if I walked by a pond and saw someone drowning, would I not jump right in? It’s so interesting. I think it speaks to how differently we see humans out in the world sometimes, compared to how we see them at work. I don’t know how we got here, but it’s almost like at work, there’s just a little less humanness there.
We don’t deal with each other sometimes like we’re human. I think that’s why WELCOA’s so passionate about making workplaces more pro-employee and putting the human experience back into it. Because when we have to ask ourselves, first, what will be the legal ramifications of my actions instead of asking ourselves does someone need something from me? is this person doing okay?, we’re lost a little bit.
And organizations are powerful, and they determine a lot of our culture globally. Business is arguably more powerful than even most governments. If we can’t get it right there, we’re probably in trouble.
MS Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. The more that I’m seeing that organizations are addressing this and they’re breathing that new life and perspective into their wellness programs and into their management teams, they are seeing that. The more that we’re seeing that trend, I can’t even fathom how many lives can be saved if we continue to adapt a more multi-faceted and empathetic approach as opposed to that one-dimensional, physical approach, putting a Band-Aid on the symptoms.
SR We’ve touched on this a little bit here and there, but I’ll just ask you outright. From your perspective, based on all of your work and experience, what are the benefits to organizations that are able to reduce stigma and effectively support employee mental health?
MS There are many. The most that employers usually want to narrow in on and measure is increased productivity, and the companies that I have worked with usually see about a 30% difference within a three year roll out: decrease absenteeism, a decrease in disability claims, because we already talked about when you’re treating the root and supporting the root issue that the physical conditions improve.
And in my experience, EAP utilization rates in these organizations are three to five times higher than the national average of support utilization.
SR That’s really powerful. You have your approach that you use with your consulting clients, and, actually, a lot of what you’re going to be talking about at the Summit is the Voice. Value. Vigilance. approach to supporting employee mental health. Can you walk us through those three steps, and then maybe provide us with one or two strategies to accomplish each so that we can get a sense for what that approach is?
MS Absolutely. The first step in effectively supporting employee mental health is creating a culture of voice where we break the silence and stigma surrounding mental health, which we talked about why that’s so critical. An immediate, no cost strategy to start creating that culture of voice is to simply use stigma-free language and to change how we talk about mental health in the workplace.
For example, instead of saying he or she is bi-polar or he or she is an alcoholic, saying he or she lives with or they live with bi-polar disorder or they struggle with alcoholism. It seems like a minor change, but for those of us that live with mental health conditions and that are trying to break the stigma, it removes the person from the illness. If we were looking at it from a physical standpoint, you wouldn’t say he is cancer.
You would say he’s being treated for cancer. So that’s one example, and simply changing the suicide conversation. Instead of saying committed suicide, saying died by suicide, which removes the shame for a lot of survivors or helps with individuals being more forthcoming talking about that topic without the shame attached to it.
SR Words are powerful, right? We underestimate that.
MS They are. How many times have you heard “Oh, this client can’t make up their mind. They are just so bi-polar”? Well, in that case, and then when you’re saying someone is bi-polar, it’s just such a negative connotation and it leads to that misconception of what that looks like.
On an organizational level, to create that culture of voice, consider pledging your commitment to supporting employee mental health and well-being. Often employees don’t know that the organization genuinely cares until you show them. You and I are very well accustomed to knowing that often employees are skeptical or angry about wellness initiatives, especially if they’re mandatory. But like you said, there are so many people in organizations who genuinely care.
So, pledge that commitment, voice that commitment, and start the conversation, hosting an awareness event like the “Out of the Darkness Walk” through www.afsp.org, or bring in a speaker that can crush that stigma, promote recovery and give employees practical strategies, or send out a companywide pledge that voices your commitment and the support that’s available.
A company that I’m currently blessed to work with is Associated Bank, and they have given their employees and leadership a voice and pledged their commitment in a unique way through creating a Diversity and Inclusion Council. Their CEO, Phil Flynn, HR leaders, as well as employees, are actively participating from various branches in this Council to lead initiatives in improving the employees’ experience and fostering a culture of inclusion.
A part of that initiative is peer resource groups, including veteran and LGBT support networks, among others, that are open to all employees, which I think is just so proactive and progressive in their commitment to voicing that. The follow through is incredible.
SR One of the things that keeps coming back up when we’re talking about mental health at work or finding purpose and meaning or feeling engaged or feeling like an employee understands their role or retention or any of those things that organizations care about, I feel like it keeps coming back to the fact that we have an epidemic of isolation.
I love that you’re describing a proactive effort to pull people with similar experiences who can learn from each other and learn that they’re not alone, they’re not isolated—pull those people together and help them create community within work.
MS I’m so glad you mentioned that because that is actually the perfect transition into the second step of valuing employee mental health equal to physical health and leading in a way where employees feel valued and connected in the workplace. It’s so important because employees that feel valued and feel that connection that you just perfectly described, are more productive. They have lower rates of depression, and they’re at lower risk for suicide. Like you said, in our digital age, the feelings of loneliness and disconnect is an absolute epidemic.
One way to value employees and their mental health is to create that team unity and social connection. That not only supports the mental health, but it is a protective factor against suicide. Sara, that can be so simple. It can be as simple as creating a potluck lunch where people will come and chat and connect. Or doing teambuilding exercises or getting to know each other at every weekly meeting, just to create that conversation, that connection and that unity is so critical.
One other strategy to build that unity and to value employee mental health is to provide and promote access to mental health support in a variety of ways.
Because just like there’s different learning styles and management styles that we know about, there’s different outreach styles. Not everyone is comfortable calling a 1-800 number when they have an issue or are in crisis.
So, we need to meet employees where they’re the most comfortable so they get the support and treatment that they need.
SR Sorry to interrupt you. I think that’s a really important point. You referenced earlier this frustration over engagement issues with EAP and other kinds of programs that support mental health. And I don’t want to lose the point you just made, which is, if I’m hearing you correctly, there’s a lot of engagement concerns that could be explained by the fact that we’re treating everyone like they all want to have the same kind of resource and they all are comfortable with the same kind of outreach to get access to that resource.
If the EAP program is “Here’s your EAP. It’s a phone number. Go,” that might not be the most meaningful opportunity to support your employees and their mental health and could explain the engagement challenges that organizations are experiencing.
MS You hit the nail right on the head. I completely agree with you there. And in my experience, and the research shows that male employees, specifically, are shown to be more comfortable and have higher outreach and utilization of support via text or via video where, historically, females tend to use the telephonic support and/or in person support. We’ll be talking about this at Summit but also with the clients that I work with, helping them reach employees at all of those levels.
Mettie’s Suggestions for Creative Outreach for Mental Health
- Text Message: Host the Hope Text Line 741-741
- Face to Face: Have support groups onsite or post information about group support for Al-Anon or AA or NAMI
- Education-based: Offer peer to peer mental health and wellness classes
- Video Resources: Provide video libraries like mantherapy.org or seizetheawkward.org that employees can access 24/7.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
A company that has created that stigma-free culture of voice and truly is utilizing that value of employee mental health—an amazing example is Dupont. They host AA and other substance abuse meetings onsite, and they started an ICU video campaign. Again, we talked about how that’s a strong avenue to reach employees. The video shows what mental and emotional distress looks like and how you can support the peers if you notice those signs. Dupont is really a pioneer in this value step.
They were hosting AA meetings onsite as early as 1990. I think that is absolutely incredible. Sara, with the organizations you connect with, do you see a lot of that, that being intervened onsite?
SR No. I think, even the most innovative organizations that do wellness well and have it built into their organizational DNA, are afraid to do something as bold as hosting AA meetings onsite. The perception would be that it would be a huge HR nightmare.
MS Sure. Even though companies have been doing this since the ‘90s, because it is not promoted and is not the norm, people automatically think “Oh, we can’t do that here.” Just like you said, it sounds like an HR nightmare, but it is being done. Many of the strategies that I’m mentioning here today are at little or no cost. They’re almost immediate.
For listeners that say, “No. My company would never do that,” even putting pamphlets in the high traffic areas and on the lunchroom tables of AA or Al-Anon is still saying and promoting the message that we know this is an issue that is commonly struggled with, either with our employees or their family members, and we’re not afraid to acknowledge it. That goes such a big way in breaking that stigma.
That third and final step of support is vigilance. It is knowing how to identify and respond to employees who are in mental health or suicidal crisis. In 2016, seven out of the ten suicide deaths where completed by middle-aged men. Often, we think teenagers are at highest risk because that’s what we hear most about. Before Anthony and Kate’s tragedy, that was mostly what was in the media, but it’s actually our middle-aged peers that are in our cubicles and on our assembly lines. Again, an immediate no cost strategy for that support vigilance is to know the warning signs. I’m happy to go through those if you want.
SR I think we should go over them. We all have our assumptions about what the warning signs are, but I think we’d all appreciated being armed with the facts when identifying someone who may be at risk.
MS Wonderful. Some of the warning signs to be aware of would be, because we all have down days or sad days, but if an employee is seeming withdrawn, very down, very out of character in terms of being unmotivated for two weeks or more, that’s definitely a warning sign. Mood swings that are causing problems in personal or professional relationships, an employee being very impulsive or you notice that they’re coming to work hung over, talking about going out to drink or using medications in an abusive way.
One warning sign that actually gets minimized is chronic sleep deprivation, which is definitely a warning sign and a contributing factor to mental illness and suicidal action. People saying things like “I have no purpose. I’m just a number. You guys would be better off without me. Or I just feel like I’m drowning. I can’t go on anymore.” Those are definitely red flags to be aware of, and that leads me to the second strategy, and that is to equip every manager, HR leader, team lead, etc., with the skills to know how to support and respond when they see those warning signs or an employee discloses to them that they are struggling.
I recently spoke at an event that had 30 companies represented, so 30 different HR teams. Three teams from different organizations came forward and shared their experience of employees coming to the HR office saying that they were suicidal and their sheer panic because they had absolutely no idea what to do. It’s so common to think that would never happen to me, until it does. I will touch on what to do if that happens because that’s a terrible situation for the leader to be in and for the employee who is brave enough to come forward.
If an employee does come forward, it is very important to first thank that person and acknowledge their bravery in coming forward and being empathetic. Sara, you really hit the nail on the head that often we lack that in the work place. Let that person know that what they’re dealing with is real, that that pain is real, and that you acknowledge that struggle.
Since their fear of losing their job or what this means for their employment, like we talked about before, is going to be so high, de-escalate that fear by letting them know that you will stand by them through this and that the most important thing right now is that they get the support that they need. If the employee that’s in crisis is consumed with that fear, they can’t focus on a solution. Then, of course, the next step is reaching out for support. In the Value step, ideally, those crisis numbers and a relationship with the local crisis center will already be made. That’s one of the steps we talk about.
Have the employee stay in your office and reach out to either that local crisis line or a national crisis line, and have the employee engage with that crisis professional to find out what the next best step is. If you can’t de-escalate the situation, if they’re being violent towards themselves or mentioning violence towards other employees, do not hesitate to reach out to the local authorities or 911. In that case, ask that a CIT (Crisis Intervention Trained) officer gets dispatched to your organization because they are trained in dealing with this crisis intervention and in being empathetic towards what that person is going through.
An example of a company who has been very vigilant in this response is Mercury Marine. They brought me in to do a mental health and leadership training that was completely voluntary—not pretend voluntary where you are punished if you don’t show. They opened it up to their 330 managers that serve their 3,000 employees, and 287 managers came to the training to learn how they can specifically support their employees’ mental health. That was 87%.
SR That’s giving me goosebumps.
MS Isn’t that so amazing?
SR That’s a huge win. We have our Seven Benchmarks Process at WELCOA for rolling out any kind of wellness initiative, and the first step in the process is to get committed and aligned leadership. Historically, we focused a lot on CEO support or C-Suite leadership support, but we now know that the biggest determinate of employee engagement and wellness is one’s direct manager.
Organizations may feel like managers won’t be receptive to being trained on mental health, but the example you just outlined suggests that many managers may actually want it and that the majority of them already care. It makes it, hopefully, a little safer for an organization who’s teetering on the edge of overhauling their management training to incorporate wellness concepts and strategies to get that push they need to say, “Yes. This is the right thing to do, and our management is going to respond positively to this.”
MS Absolutely. You’re right. They do care, and at their level, it makes their job easier when their employees are more resilient and getting the support that they need. Productivity numbers go up. Conflicts on the floor among the employees go down. Even further than that, really measuring the impact and the effectiveness, as a result of that Mercury Marine training with the managers: 97% of those managers reported that, as a result of the training, they now know how to identify and support employees who are struggling with mental health issues, and 86% were more comfortable talking about mental health with their employees. To me, that is power. We don’t know how many lives can be saved just by being more comfortable in addressing that.
SR Are there any other examples of organizations that really handle Voice. Value. Vigilance. pieces of their strategy well and who are reducing stigma or rolling out meaningful mental health resources as a result?
MS Absolutely. Another example of a company, a very large organization, that particularly really honed in on that Value piece in equalizing mental health and physical health is Caterpillar. They discovered that many participants in their diabetes management program also were struggling with depression. It was preventing them from reaching those physical benchmarks that they were looking for.
As a result, they developed an internal depression care management program. This was back in 2008, and again, some of the listeners might be thinking “Oh, well, I bet nobody showed up, or my employees wouldn’t show up.” In the first three months, more than 200 employees participated in the depression care management program. They really started to see those numbers turn around, which is just incredible, and the participation itself shows that the need is out there. Since they had already done campaigns to break that stigma and silence, again, participation in a voluntary program was very well received.
SR So, it started to turn things around both from a depression perspective, but then it sounds like from a diabetes prevention perspective they were better able to tackle the steps that they needed to manage that disease as well?
MS Yes. Absolutely. If you think about it, it makes total sense. If you are dealing with depression, how motivated are you to eat healthy and to take your medication? Not very. Again, that’s often the root of the issue. The company recognized that. They intervened and supported that root issue, and they did start seeing those numbers they were looking for in the metrics that they were measuring, which is just fantastic and obviously what we’re all looking for when we’re looking at measuring that impact and the return on the wellness investment.
SR I think many readers at this point are excited about the possibilities for their employees if they adopt a Voice. Value. Vigilance. approach, but their next question is going to immediately be, “Okay. I need a tool. What am I going to do? How do I get tactical?” You created the Stigma-Free Blueprint, which is a free, next-steps resource for wellness leaders and managers and companies who are trying to support their employees’ mental health. How can our readers gain access to that?
MS Sure. You are right. It’s completely free access, and it goes through the strategies that we talked about today and additional strategies on what that roll out looks like. This is immediate, little to no cost that can have a turn around and not only benefit the organization but the employee as well. If listeners are interested in rolling that out or to look at that additional information, they can access it on my website at corporate.mettiespiess.com. Or they’re more than welcome to email me directly at mettie@aworldwithoutsuicide.com to get access or to ask a question.
SR Mettie, this has been really great and, again, really timely. This morning, when I woke up remembering I was going to chat with you today, I had a lump in the back of my throat because this just feels like it’s so personal and I am so grateful to have a conversation with you that might help people understand suicide, understand that it is preventable, and understand the humanness of it. I think that after hearing your words today, we all have a better idea of how to provide great peers in support of our co-workers who may be dealing with mental illness. I know that we’re going to be together at the Summit. I hope that everyone can join and hear more from you there, but is there anything else you’d like to leave us with?
MS I am beyond thrilled for the Summit, as well. You just wrapped this up so beautifully. One life lost to suicide is too many. We can do better. We’re stronger together, and I truly believe that no one is beyond saving. One person can make a difference in intervening and in encouraging that employee to seek the support that they need. Everyone has that power, and hopefully this interview and these strategies will make people more comfortable and confident having those lifesaving conversations.
SR Thank you, Mettie.
Mettie Spiess, CWP • Founder, A World Without Suicide
Mettie Spiess, CWP, is an international mental health speaker, nationally certified corporate health coach, and the founder of A World Without Suicide and her blog, InspireHopeBlog.com. Dubbed the “tiny but mighty stigma-crusher” and “champion for change” by clients nation-wide, Mettie shares her practical (Voice. Value. Vigilance.) leadership process with companies to effectively support employee mental health. In 2016, the National Alliance on Mental Illness awarded Mettie the Education Advancement Award for her work to end the stigma associated with mental illness by providing education, raising awareness, and promoting recovery. The impact principals she teaches in her trainings are based on her eight years of experience coaching employees and empowering them with skills to take charge of their health. Mettie graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point with a Bachelor’s of Science in Corporate Health Promotion and Wellness and holds her Wellness Practitioner Certification through the National Wellness Institute.
