Latest update April 1st, 2026 12:40 AM
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Mental health awareness in the work place being fervently promoted
Some of the participants at a recent PTEC workshop facilitated by Sharon Houston (seated)
The Professional Training, Employment and Consultancy Services (PTEC), is lobbying for more awareness in the work place in relation to the mental health of workers. This was done through a number of workshops during the past week with persons from various business entities.
Mental Health speaks to a person’s psychological and emotional well-being. It affects how people think, feel, and act. Moreover, it helps to determine how they handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.
According to one of the facilitators of the recent workshops, Debbie Houston, who is a psychologist, “In order for employees to function everything with them must be in place,” adding that “persons have issues all the time, take for example something that is happening in their home.”
She stated that for the majority of working persons, most of their time is spent at work and thus whatever is affecting them personally will eventually be portrayed in their work which will in turn affect their place of employment.
The psychologist gave an example in which she stated, “Let’s say an employee who is always early for work suddenly starts coming to work late on several occasions. The most common thing that will be done is for that person to be issued a warning from their superior.”
“Little do we know that person may have a sick family member at home who is taking up all of their time and it starts to affect their efforts to reach to work early,” she added.
Given this example, Houston mentioned that this can raise the stress level of a person or drag them down into a state of depression.
As a result of this, PTEC has launched a number of programmes geared at improving the working environment.
The founder of PTEC, Marlon Joseph said, “We decided that we would do tailored programmes designed to help companies in areas of conflict resolution, emotional and intelligence creative problem solving skills, stress management, psychological first aid in the workplace and beyond as mental health issues are on the increase.”
A move in this direction is to encourage persons to pay attention to mental health as everyone may be affected in some way or the other. It was noted that persons having an understanding of the issue at hand can help reduce the condition of an individual from getting bad to worse; just as how first aid can help reduce the chances of a person dying.
While the workshops are opened to anyone, PTEC has made a special effort to reach out to persons in managerial positions in relation to the mental health awareness programme.
This was done so that these targeted persons can understand the basic tool to fight the dilemma which is empathy. By communicating with persons in a workplace one can be able to understand what is happening in their lives so as to make an attempt at correcting it before it spill over into their working environment.
Houston also highlighted that being encouraging to others could go a long way in reducing the impact of mental health issues. She further recommended that business entities hire a guidance counselor or train the employees with basic counselling skills to help each other.
In an attempt to combat the alarming rate of unemployment in Guyana and to improve the poor quality of services offered by employees and employers, PTEC was formed in 2018 to address these burning issues that are very prevalent in society.
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