Supporting Mental Health at Work: Real Stories from Real People

Working in psychiatry, we spend so much time listening to other people's trauma that it's easy to ignore our own stress. A few years ago, I had a heavy schedule packed with constant emergencies. I thought I was handling it fine, but the stress was quietly turning into severe burnout.

A fellow nurse practitioner noticed I was quieter than usual during our morning meeting and taking too long on my patient notes. Instead of just saying hello, she pulled me into an empty office. She said, 'You've had really tough cases this week. I can see you are exhausted. I'm doing your afternoon evaluations so you can leave the floor and take a real break.'

What she did meant a lot to me. It wasn't just about giving me less work; it was about feeling seen. Mental health workers often hate asking for help because we think we should be immune to the problems we treat in our patients. Because she stepped in first, I didn't have to force myself to admit I was struggling.

That changed how I look at support at work. I learned that real support isn't just an HR hotline; it's paying attention to your coworkers. Now, I watch my colleagues for those same quiet signs of burnout. It taught me that admitting we need help doesn't make us bad at our jobs, it keeps us going.

I remember a period where I was juggling a lot between running the practice and supporting our clinicians, and I could feel myself getting stretched pretty thin. I tend to push through stress, so I probably wasn't fully aware of how much it was building up.

One of the clinicians I work with pulled me aside after a meeting and just checked in. It wasn't anything formal. They just said something along the lines of, "Hey, you've been carrying a lot lately... how are you actually doing?" It caught me off guard a bit, but in a good way.

What stood out was that they weren't trying to fix anything. They just created space for me to be honest. That gave me permission to slow down and recognize that I needed to step back a little and delegate more instead of trying to hold everything myself.

The biggest takeaway for me was how impactful simple awareness can be. In a workplace, especially in helping professions, it's easy to focus outward and miss what's going on with the people next to you. That experience changed how I show up with my own team. I try to be more intentional about checking in, not just on performance, but on how people are actually doing.

It reinforced for me that support in the workplace doesn't have to be complicated. Sometimes it's just noticing, asking, and being willing to listen.

Darin King, LPC

Clinical Director, Darin King Counseling

During a busy season at work, I was feeling overwhelmed and burned out. I was having trouble sleeping and found it hard to focus during meetings. One of my colleagues noticed that I seemed quieter than usual and asked if I was okay. Instead of judging me, she listened while I shared how stressed I felt. She offered to help with a few tasks and reminded me to take short breaks during the day. Her kindness made me feel seen and supported. Because of her actions, I felt less alone and more comfortable talking about mental health at work. I learned that small acts of care can make a big difference and that checking in with others truly matters.

A few years into running ResumeYourWay, I hit a wall. We were growing fast, I was managing a team of 30-plus writers, handling client escalations, and still doing intake calls myself because I didn't trust anyone else to get the details right. I wasn't sleeping. I was snapping at people over small things. I told myself it was just the cost of building something.

My operations manager at the time pulled me aside after a team meeting and said something I didn't expect. She told me I looked like I was drowning and that the team could see it. She didn't frame it as a performance problem. She said, "You taught us how to do this work. Let us do it. You don't have to carry everything yourself." Then she handed me a restructured workflow she'd built on her own time that would take 15 hours of weekly intake calls off my plate.

That conversation changed how I run the company. Not because she fixed my schedule, though that helped. It changed things because she showed me that mental health support at work doesn't have to look like a formal program or a benefits package. Sometimes it's one person being honest with you when everyone else is too polite or too scared to say what they see.

What I learned is that the most meaningful mental health support in a workplace comes from colleagues who pay attention and say something. Not in a clinical way. Not with a pamphlet. Just direct honesty from someone who cares enough to risk an uncomfortable conversation.

I've since built that into how we operate at RYW. Every team lead is trained to recognize signs of burnout in their writers, and we have a standing rule: if you see someone struggling, say something privately before it becomes a performance issue. We've found that early conversations like the one my ops manager had with me reduce burnout-related turnover by about 35%. People don't leave jobs where they feel seen. They leave jobs where nobody notices they're falling apart.

Last year during a particularly brutal product launch, my CTO noticed I was responding to Slack messages at 2am and sending increasingly terse emails. Instead of ignoring it or making a joke about hustle culture, he walked into my office one morning and said something I did not expect. He told me he was worried about me, that the quality of my communication had changed, and he asked if I wanted to grab lunch away from the office.

That lunch lasted two hours. No agenda, no work talk for the first 45 minutes. He shared that he had gone through a similar burnout phase at his previous company and ended up in hospital with stress-related chest pains at 34. He was not lecturing me. He was just being honest about his own experience.

What struck me was the courage it took. In tech especially, there is an unspoken expectation that founders are supposed to be unbreakable. Him being vulnerable about his own struggles gave me permission to admit I was drowning. I restructured my schedule that week, delegated three major responsibilities, and started protecting my evenings.

The lesson I carry from that is that support does not need to be grand gestures or formal programs. Sometimes it is one person saying I see you and I have been there too. I now make a point of doing the same for my team members when I notice the signs.

A few years back during a particularly rough stretch at Cirrus Bridge — we'd lost a major client and were trying to figure out what came next — I had a senior engineer on the team notice I was running on fumes before I'd admitted it to myself. He didn't make it a big moment. He just came to me after a team meeting and said, "I don't think you're okay, and I don't think you have to be right now." That was it.

It landed differently than I expected. I'd been so focused on projecting stability for the team that I'd convinced myself I was fine. Having someone I respected call it quietly, without turning it into a formal check-in or a performance concern, gave me permission to acknowledge what was actually happening.

What he did right: he made it private, he made it low-pressure, and he didn't offer solutions. He wasn't trying to fix it. He was just naming it. That's the part most people get wrong — they immediately jump to "what can I do?" when sometimes the most supportive thing is just to say, "I see you, and you don't have to hide this."

What I took from it as a leader is that the people you'd least expect to be struggling are often the ones who are most skilled at masking it. The ones holding things together for everyone else are frequently the least likely to ask for help. Since then, I try to create intentional moments — not formalized wellness programs, just honest one-on-ones where the question isn't "how's the project going?" but actually "how are you doing?" and I mean it when I ask it.

One experience that stood out to me was during a particularly demanding period when we were navigating complex client challenges and tight timelines. A colleague recognized the pressure I was under and took the initiative to step in—helping reprioritize what truly needed immediate attention and creating space for a more manageable pace.

What made the biggest impact wasn't just the help itself, but the awareness. It reinforced how important it is to recognize when someone may be carrying more than they show.

That experience shaped how I lead today. I'm more intentional about checking in with my team, encouraging open conversations, and creating an environment where people feel supported—not just professionally, but personally as well.

Hello there! My name is Akilia Fadhel, and I am a psychotherapist with a boutique private practice called Madison Square Psychotherapy.

When I think of a time when a colleague showed support related to mental health, both for myself and my clients, I think of a shared lunch time. This simple gesture of taking a moment to have lunch with colleagues offers several therapeutic benefits. It offers a much needed break from the weight of the day, helps to build morale among the team as you share stories from your work experiences, and increases feelings of connectedness.

On a personal note, Inviting a colleague to lunch reinforced my sense of agency, reminding me that I can take intentional steps to shape a work environment that supports my mental well-being.