2025 Summit Brain Health Panel Reflection
We invited community members to volunteer their time in exchange for a complimentary pass to our Summit by writing session recaps and reflections for our Summit. We hope you enjoy their reflections! Want to watch the Summit on-demand? Learn more here.
Supporting brain health is an emerging trend in workplace wellbeing. In this panel session we learn about actionable steps that organizations can take to support employee mental health and reduce stigma in the workplace. Our panel experts explored four domains:
Helping individuals with mental health challenges.
Supporting neurodivergent workers.
Promoting cognition and brain health.
Fostering resilience to enhance performance.
Understanding Mental Health as an Ecosystem:
Cassie Vieten emphasized the importance of addressing mental health as an ecosystem. It’s not about a single solution like suggesting exercise for depression or anxiety. Instead, we need multiple different points of entry to help people when they're having trouble and to build mental health resilience in a preventative manner. According to John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation this ecosystem can include a wide range of mental well-being strategies from crisis intervention counseling, nutrition, exercise, creativity, art, music, time outdoors, to serving others to enhance purpose. Mental health challenges are widespread. Research shows 25-50% of people experience a mental health challenge, even in healthy workplaces. It’s not a minority. We need to normalize it and be open about it.
Building Neuro Affirming Workplaces:
Jenn Feldman highlighted that organizations can evaluate and design workplaces to be more effective in understanding somebody's capabilities and strengths. Invalidating environments can be disabling. Currently around 20% of the global population identifies as neurodivergent and this number is expected to rise to 50-60% of our workforce by 2050. The concept of disability is the conflict between a person's experience and their environment. Solution, redesign the environment. We can promote neuro affirming workplaces by asking questions: What do you need? How can I help you? How do you communicate best i.e. written form or verbal, video call or slack message? Neuro affirming workplaces focus on neuro inclusivity, accessible policies, inclusive job descriptions, performance evaluation processes, and understanding intersectional perspectives. Jenn spoke of the neurodivergent spiky profile, individuals that have significant strengths in some areas but face challenges in others. Research shows a significant increase in productivity in neurodiverse teams, when neurodivergent and neurotypical people are working together. Accommodations for the neurodivergent population are often targeted towards barriers around attitudinal or communication barriers. However, it's not necessarily a technology you put on your computer. “Changes can be made to your team dynamic through top down and bottom-up approaches, many at no cost.” - Jenn Feldman
Leveraging New Neuroscience for Mental Health:
Brain science is exploding, according to Evian Gordon. What’s new in neuroscience globally is the focus on “in the moment” strategies. The mechanism of how we switch our negative to positive thoughts right now, not in 20 minutes. Technology has opened the door to measure our unconscious processing, what happens in one fifth of a second. If we do not make our unconscious processes conscious, they can dictate our lives. There is a continuum across the distribution of mental health, well-being and peak performance. Biologically we all fluctuate across these different states. Resonant breathing, about 6 breaths per minute, can switch off your fight-flight system. It’s a 2,500-year-old idea of breathing slowly with the addition of new neuroscience. We can take these insights and apply them rigorously to mental health. “If you get the brain right the rest will follow”. People are more content to talk about their brain scores (measures of their emotion, feelings, cognition, self-regulation) and tools that they're using to help address stress, than to talk about their depression and anxiety. It's less non-consciously threatening to people. Sharing how we think can also be very helpful. Very seldom do we give people the chance to share their strategy in the way they think about a problem, not the solution. We can all think in creative and innovative ways if given the chance. There are many ways to think about the same problem, if we just take the time to listen.
Resilience and Flourishing in the Workplace:
Organizations have a responsibility to create an infrastructure that promotes well-being and mental health of employees and create conditions where they can thrive and flourish, says Karen Doll. We as individuals also have accountability to manage our own mental health. Resilience is connotated with the notion of forging through difficulties, but we can expand the notion to one of bouncing forward and flourishing, not just bouncing back to baseline. Employers need to understand how to help employees foster and cultivate a sense of purpose, connection and community. None of us flourish in a vacuum. We are tribal beings with a fundamental human need to connect and belong. The workplace is one pathway to flourishing. As people have fewer 3rd places and areas of community, they look to the workplace to fulfill more of their needs. There's an opportunity for organizations to help people flourish and leaders need to support and prioritize these initiatives. We can also approach this from the bottom up. We can all help someone. We can't all help everyone, yet we can all help more people. Regardless of what level or position you are, we are on this journey together. Pick one more person to reach out and check in with. You never know what's going on with someone and it could be that one check in that helps them from sliding into the red zone of the mental health continuum. Tell people why they matter, people at work, in your neighborhood, and in your family.
Branding Well-being - Shift in Language:
We can do a better job with branding, says Cassandra Vieten. Be skillful and specific in the terminology. Use words like real health, whole health, whole person health, regular health, thriving, flourishing, high performance, and diverse teams. Diverse teams are the strongest teams so it’s really a strengths-based approach. Educate decision makers on the hard biological outcomes that result from wellness practices (mindfulness, exercise, healthy food, mind body integration). Wellbeing practices should be at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy, not the top. Taking a 10 min break every hour can result in 2-4 times the productivity. Demonstrate these productivity outcomes. To create a well-oiled machine, help people work in their zone of genius. Small actions can affect culture change in an organization (i.e. begin meetings with 1-2 minutes to get grounded, 90 second breakout sessions to connect, 45–50-minute meetings). Don't underestimate the power of a 5 minute “go dark” rest moment. Many will say they don't have 5 minutes to spare. However, that's a story that has dominated and it's time to change that story.
Parting Advice from Panel Experts: Practical Takeaway Tips for Supporting Brain Health
Be open to lived experiences that aren't yours. Jenn Feldman encourages organizations to inquire about employees' needs, wants, wishes, and desires in their workplaces. To ask people what kind of work environment they need to be most efficient, effective, and comfortable. Add the inquisitiveness tool to your toolbox.
Challenge biases. Evian Gordon recommends setting up straightforward and fun ways for people to challenge and learn about their biases.
Sometimes the answer is hidden in plain sight. Karen Doll advised us to bring more intention and awareness to assumptions about people or circumstances and quoted the “What is water” parable to shed light on this.
Use available resources. Cassandra Vieten suggested we visit John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation and take 10 minutes at the end of every call to focus on health behavior.
