Over the last several decades mental health has reduced in many contexts to an individualistic biomedical issue that can be fixed quickly through medication, self-work, and education to return an employee to the workplace as rapidly as possible. This has come at the cost of more effective but longer-term interventions and relational collective responsibility. 

 

The rise in apps, online tools, diagnostics, and self-guided individual learning whilst useful tools, these are, across the board, not having the impact clients need to see. The closer reality is that increasing psychological safety, vulnerable conversations, and shared experiences have greater long-term impact and should not be discounted or underinvested. This is where we focus our work. In order to belong and feel safe, we need to slow down and reconnect at a human level two fundamental requirements missing from many modern workplaces.

 

iGallos is a psychoeducation and facilitation consultancy specialising in working with organisations across all industries, at all organisational levels, and across the globe, to improve the understanding of and approach to mental health in the workplace to improve relational ways of working and to reduce performance and conduct issues that can be damaging for both the individual and the business. 

 

This is achieved through curiosity, education, debate, and practical application around: 

 

• Our individual experiences and understanding of mental health using the bio-psycho-social (or biomedical-psychological-anthropological) model.

• Systemic impacts of workplace structures and dynamics on culture and thereby their impact (often subconscious) on our mental health.

• A holistic longer term human relational approach rather than the prevailing short term individual transactional bio-medical pathologies.

 

Core principles include:

• Understanding more about what has happened to someone rather than what is wrong with someone, and how a human reacts to this.

• Understanding the impact of history, culture, and context on the resulting behaviour.

• Looking holistically at all the systems in which we function and all the roles we inhabit.

• Working ethically and within appropriate boundaries.

 

In practice this involves:

• Group and individual sessions.

• Coaching, literacy, and psychoeducation (including delivery of MHFA England Mental Health First Aid where appropriate, and bespoke courses).

• Programme, coaching and supervision programmes for mental health first aid and ambassador communities.

• Global organisational mental health management development.

• Longer term (6-12 month) programmes where we can purposely slow down, connect more deeply and experience the impact and interconnection of time on our private and work lives.

• Workshops with leaders, HR, line managers, and/or special interest groups.

• Webinars and talks.

• Support and supervision.