Workplace Mental Health – A Series – An Overview Of The Issue (This Is Important!)
The mind and the body are inseparable. And you do want to engage the whole employee in your worksite wellness program, right?Most worksite wellness programs today are not really wellness programs at all – they are employee health status management programs. Why do I say this? Most worksite wellness programs focus solely on employee physical health, to the exclusion of all the other dimensions of wellness.As conceived by the modern wellness field’s founders, (Robert Allen, Donald Ardell, Halbert Dunn, Bill Hettler and John Travis), wellness is a multi-dimensional concept. The published wellness model of the National Wellness Institute includes the following dimensions: physical, social, emotional, intellectual, occupational and spiritual.Emotional well-being is associated with numerous benefits to health, family, work, and economic status. Positive emotions and view of life are associated with decreased risk for disease, illness, and injury; better immune functioning; better coping and quicker recovery; and increased longevity. In addition, mental health and mental illness may influence physical health and biologic functioning. Positive mental health is associated with better endocrine function (i.e., lower levels of cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine) and better immune response (i.e., higher antibody production and greater resistance to illness). It has also been shown to be associated with longevity.Researchers are continuing to learn more and more about the mind – body connection. It has been clearly shown that emotions play a huge role in our physical health. There is also a reciprocal relationship between many chronic diseases and mental health. Self-efficacy, goal-setting, and problem-solving enable self-management behaviors, and these components are dependent on emotional health. On the other hand, self-management behaviors that enhance health, such as physical activity and stress reduction, can improve mental health status and quality of life. In many ways, it makes no sense to address physical health without addressing emotional health at the same time.The absence of mental illness does not mean the presence of mental health. Growing research supports the view that these are independent, but related dimensions. Mental wellbeing are characterized by the presence of positive affect (e.g., optimism, cheerfulness and interest), absence of negative affect, and satisfaction with life. On the other hand, mental illness is characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behavior associated with distress or impaired functioning.Why Address Mental Wellbeing in the Workplace?The health of the mind and body cannot be separated. What effects one influences the other. Therefore, a healthy mind supports and contributes to a healthy body and vice versa.Mental illness costs employers money and mental health can impact productivity and employee performance. Just like physical health, mental health can be viewed as being a continuum. At one end there is mental health and mental illness is located at the opposite end.Mental health generally refers to the successful performance of mental function, resulting in productive activities, fulfilling relationships, and the ability to adapt to change and adversity. These domains are commonly referred to as wellbeing.Mental illness includes diseases with classic psychiatric diagnoses, such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. Mental health and mental illness can be influenced by multiple determinants, including genetics and biology and their interactions with social and environmental factors.Employers approach employee health through a multi-strategy framework. A multi-strategy framework can be applied to an employer approach to mental health as well. A comprehensive approach includes: promotion, prevention, intervention, and follow-up. It is important to recognize that mental health promotion needs to be equal in importance to the prevention and treatment of mental illness.Today’s worksite wellness programs need to address all dimensions of employee wellness, not just physical health.
The Best Options for Your Caravan Finance
Options for Your Caravan FinanceBuying a caravan can be a great way to organise more flexible holidays and weekend breaks. It can provide you with a home away from home, with all of your creature comforts. You can travel anywhere you would like to visit, spend one night or several without needing to worry about expensive hotel accommodation or costly restaurant bills. However, unless you are in a very fortunate financial position, it is likely that you will need to consider finance to fund the purchase.Dealership Caravan Finance:The most obvious place to look for your caravan finance is the dealership where you are purchasing the caravan. While this can be a great place to secure automotive finance, consumers should not assume that they are automatically obtaining the best auto finance rates. The dealership may have some attractive packages, but be sure to read the small print to check for any hidden fees or charges, and compare the rates with other providers before you commit. In many cases, the sticker price for the finance options are often based on longer term loans to make the monthly charges more attractive. Although this means that your monthly expenses will be less, you will be paying far more over the term of the loan. Always check the total finance cost in addition to the APR and monthly payment estimates.Bank Loans:Another source of financing is a loan from your high street bank. Most banks and financial institutions advertise some great loan deals for any purpose. However, you should be aware that since the global finance crisis, many banks are reluctant to lend to those without an excellent credit record. If you have less than perfect credit, you may not qualify for the advertised rate and will be offered a less competitive deal. Again, be sure to compare any quotes to check if it is the best possible deal.Specialist Caravan Finance Broker:A broker can be the best way to get a great deal on your caravan finance. Reputable brokers have access to a range of lenders who specialise in certain types of finance. The broker can search for the most competitive deals, allowing you to compare caravan finance rates without needing to fill out multiple forms and applications. A broker can assist you even if you have less than perfect credit as they will have access to a number of companies with more relaxed lending criteria. The broker can assist you with the paperwork, making the loan application process far less stressful and frustrating.
Technology and Our Kids
With most people plugged in all the time, I often wonder what effect technology is having on our kids. Some say technology is another helpful learning tool that is making our kids smarter and some say it is having no significant effect at all. Still, others propose that technology use is encouraging social isolation, increasing attentional problems, encouraging unhealthy habits, and ultimately changing our culture and the way humans interact. While there isn’t a causal relationship between technology use and human development, I do think some of the correlations are strong enough to encourage you to limit your children’s screen time.Is television really that harmful to kids? Depending on the show and duration of watching, yes. Researchers have found that exposure to programs with fast edits and scene cuts that flash unrealistically across the screen are associated with the development of attentional problems in kids. As the brain becomes overwhelmed with changing stimuli, it stops attending to any one thing and starts zoning out. Too much exposure to these frenetic programs gives the brain more practice passively accepting information without deeply processing it. However, not all programs are bad. Kids who watch slow paced television programs like Sesame Street are not as likely to develop attentional problems as kids who watch shows like The Power Puff Girls or Johnny Neutron. Educational shows are slow paced with fewer stimuli on the screen which gives children the opportunity to practice attending to information. Children can then practice making connections between new and past knowledge, manipulating information in working memory, and problem solving. Conclusively, a good rule of thumb is to limit television watching to an hour to two hours a day, and keep an eye out for a glossy-eyed transfixed gaze on your child’s face. This is a sure sign that his or her brain has stopped focusing and it is definitely time to shut off the tube so that he can start thinking, creating, and making sense out of things again (all actions that grow rather than pacify the brain).When you do shut off the tube, don’t be surprised if you have a melt down on your hands. Technology has an addictive quality because it consistently activates the release of neurotransmitters that are associated with pleasure and reward. There have been cases of addictions to technology in children as young as four-years-old. Recently in Britain, a four-year-old girl was put into intensive rehabilitation therapy for an iPad addiction! I’m sure you know how rewarding it is to sign onto Facebook and see that red notification at the top of the screen, or even more directly how rewarding playing games on your computer can be as you accumulate more “accomplishments.” I am guilty of obsessive compulsively checking my Facebook, email, and blog throughout the day. The common answer to this problems is, “All things in moderation.” While I agree, moderation may be difficult for children to achieve as they do not possess the skills for self discipline and will often take the easy route if not directed by an adult. According to a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, children spend about 5 hours watching television and movies, 3 hours on the internet, 1 1/2 hours texting on the phone, and a 1/2 hour talking on the phone each day. That’s almost 75 hours of technology use each week, and I am sure these results are mediated by parental controls and interventions. Imagine how much technology children use when left to their own defenses! In a recent Huffington Post article, Dr. Larry Rosen summed it up well, “… we see what happens if you don’t limit these active participation. The child continues to be reinforced in the highly engaging e-world, and more mundane worlds, such as playing with toys or watching TV, pale in comparison.” How are you ever going to get your child to read a black and white boring old book when they could use a flashy, rewarding iPad instead? Children on average spend 38 minutes or less each day reading. Do you see a priority problem here?With such frequent technology use, it is important to understand if technology use encourages or discourages healthy habits. It’s reported that among heavy technology users, half get C’s or lower in school. Light technology users fair much better, only a quarter of them receiving low marks. There are many factors that could mediate the relationship between technology use and poor grades. One could be decreased hours of sleep. Researchers from the Department of Family and Community Health at the University of Maryland found that children who had three or more technological devices in their rooms got at least 45 minutes less sleep than the average child the same age. Another could be the attention problems that are correlated with frequent technology use. Going further, multitasking, while considered a brilliant skill to have on the job, is proving to be a hindrance to children. It is not uncommon to see a school aged child using a laptop, cell phone, and television while trying to also complete a homework assignment. If we look closer at the laptop, we might see several tabs opened to various social networks and entertainment sites, and the phone itself is a mini computer these days. Thus, while multitasking, children are neglecting to give their studies full attention. This leads to a lack of active studying, a failure to transfer information from short term to long term memory, which leads ultimately to poorer grades in school. Furthermore, it is next to impossible for a child to engage is some of the higher order information processing skills such as making inferences and making connections between ideas when multitasking. We want our children to be deep thinkers, creators, and innovators, not passive information receptors who later regurgitate information without really giving it good thought. Therefore, we should limit access to multiple devices as well as limit duration of use.Age comes into play when discussing the harmful effects of technology. For children younger than two-years-old, frequent exposure to technology can be dangerously detrimental as it limits the opportunities for interaction with the physical world. Children two-years-old and younger are in the sensorimotor stage. During this stage it is crucial that they manipulate objects in the world with their bodies so that they can learn cause-effect relationships and object permanence. Object permanence is the understanding that when an object disappears from sight, it still exists. This reasoning requires the ability to hold visual representations of objects in the mind, a precursor to understanding visual subjects such as math later in life. To develop these skills, children need several opportunities every day to mold, create, and build using materials that do not have a predetermined structure or purpose. What a technological device provides are programs with a predetermined purpose that can be manipulated in limited ways with consequences that often don’t fit the rules of the physical world. If the child is not being given a drawing app or the like, they are likely given programs that are in essence a lot like workbooks with structured activities. Researchers have found that such activities hinder the cognitive development of children this age. While researchers advise parents to limit their baby’s screen time to 2 hours or less each day, I would say it’s better to wait to introduce technology to your children until after they have at least turned 3-years-old and are demonstrating healthy cognitive development. Even then, technology use should be limited enormously to provide toddlers with time to engage in imaginative play.Technology is changing the way children learn to communicate and use communication to learn. Many parents are using devices to quiet there children in the car, at the dinner table, or where ever social activities may occur. The risk here is that the child is not witnessing and thinking about the social interactions playing out before him. Children learn social skills through modeling their parents social interactions. Furthermore, listening to others communicate and talking to others is how children learn to talk to themselves and be alone. The benefits of solitude for children come from replaying and acting out conversations they had or witnessed during the day, and this is how they ultimately make sense of their world. The bottom line is, the more we expose our children to technological devices, the worse their social skills and behavior will be. A Millennium Cohort Study that followed 19,000 children found that, “those who watched more than three hours of television, videos or DVDs a day had a higher chance of conduct problems, emotional symptoms and relationship problems by the time they were 7 than children who did not.” If you are going to give your child screen privileges, at least set aside a time for just that, and don’t use technology to pacify or preoccupy your children during social events.There’s no question that technology use can lead to poor outcomes, but technology itself is not to blame. Parents need to remember their very important role as a mediator between their children and the harmful effects of technology. Parents should limit exposure to devices, discourage device multitasking, make sure devices are not used during social events, and monitor the content that their child is engaging in (ie. Sesame Street vs. Johnny Neutron). Technology can be a very good learning tool, but children also need time to interact with objects in the real world, engage in imaginative play, socialize face-to-face with peers and adults, and children of all ages need solitude and time to let their mind wander. We need to put more emphasis on the “Ah-ha!” moment that happens when our minds are free of distractions. For this reason alone, technology use should be limited for all of us.
What are anti-ligature blinds?
Anti-ligature blinds are becoming increasingly popular in a range of different settings. The way these blinds differ from traditional blinds is that they are designed to prevent suicide by hanging.
Initially, uptake for this type of blind was largely restricted to high-risk environments such as psychiatric hospitals and prisons, where suicide is common. In mental health environments and detention centres, suicide via hanging is common and preventative measures must be implemented. A huge range of objects could be used to create a ligature point, meaning anti-ligature systems are highly important.
Over the years, anti-ligature blinds have been supplied to hospitals, schools, student accommodation and even hotels.
How do they work?
There are a range of different systems on the market, but the most reliable could well be the magnetic anti-ligature system. YewdaleKestrel® products utilise load release magnets which separate when a downward force is exerted on the product. This means that the product falls to the ground safely and prevents suicide via hanging.
The magnetic systems used in Yewdale’s products are highly reliable because magnets don’t lose their strength for hundreds of years, guaranteeing a lifetime of lifesaving functionality.
Anti-ligature blinds usually have a magnetic connection point above the blind’s barrel. The blind is easy to reconnect to the magnetic bracket after it has fallen to the floor.
If you are considering an anti-ligature blind, Yewdale is a highly recommended company. Based in the UK, Yewdale produce a wide range of anti-ligature products, commercial blinds, and healthcare products including hospital cubicle tracks and medical curtains.
Yewdale produce other anti-ligature products too including a soft, lightweight en-suite door and other accessories such as soap dispensers, toilet roll holder, shelves and artwork. You can see the full range on the website using the link below.
Complete weight loss strategy
For those who want to lose weight
Research on the causes of obesity, knowledge about weight loss, and various diets for weight loss are updated every year. However, with the update of knowledge and the release of diet pills one after another, the obesity rate continues to rise every year, and there is no sign of wanting to decline. I used to be very, very fat, and I am also a person who is prone to obesity.
So I understand the voices of fat people, I really want to lose weight, but I tried many ways to lose weight at that time without success.
I have tried the common boiled meals on the market, eating less and moving more, but it was not until I tried other diets that I managed to lose weight. After I lost weight, I began to study the essence and method of losing weight, and wrote him in this weight loss strategy article, hoping to help you.
A few key myths about losing weight
The weight loss myth of eating less and moving more
The phrase “eat less and move more” is actually true, but most people do it wrong. Many people think that they should eat less of everything, so they limit their calories to a very low level, and it feels a bit like eating an ultra-low-calorie fairy meal. Then, for the hyperactive part, the first thing that everyone thinks of is aerobic exercise such as running, cycling, etc., but in fact, this is a very short-term and easy way to regain weight, mainly because eating too little is an easy way to lose weight. The reason for the loss of muscle mass, coupled with the fact that aerobic training is not helpful for muscle mass growth, causes the metabolism to drop too much.
Maybe you can lose 5 kilograms in this way, but if your metabolism declines, you will easily regain the weight. And it’s all the fat that gets back up, not the muscle you lose that makes you look fatter than before. This is what we call the yo-yo effect, lose weight, get fat back, get fatter than before, lose weight, get back on Fat, get fatter than before.
Stop taking diet pills and meal replacements
At this time, you may start to seek other ways, eat weight loss meal replacements, taking diet pills, and so on. But believe me, most diet pills will inevitably hurt the body, especially the gastrointestinal tract. You may actually lose weight in the moment, but when your gastrointestinal tract is damaged, you will be fatter than before.
The key to understanding how to lose weight
You must have thought, why some people will not gain weight no matter what they eat, while some people will gain a kilogram the next day after eating a little bread? What is the cause of obesity? This is not a simple answer that can be solved!
You can see the link to the picture below, mainly talking about the influencing factors of obesity, which are very, very complicated.
Image source: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/296290/obesity-map-full-hi-res.pdf
In the middle of this picture is the heat balance
So we can know that calorie balance is very important
But this article doesn’t keep preaching that calorie balance is the key to losing weight like other sites
If you don’t know what calorie balance is, you can probably imagine that our body has calorie consumption (exercise, thermogenesis, basal metabolism), and calorie intake (eating).
When calorie consumption exceeds calorie intake, the weight will drop, so the truth of weight loss is to eat less and move more, very simple. In the short term, it is really possible to simply achieve weight loss by eating less and moving more, but simplicity is not simple, because the operation of the body is very complicated. Many people think that they can control their calorie consumption, that they can achieve a lot of calorie expenditure by running all the time, and that eating fairy meals (low-calorie meals) can reduce calorie intake and then easily lose it.
However, according to research, 90% of people who use calorie control, eat less and move more to lose weight will fail or regain the weight.
Because eating less and moving more for too long, metabolism will easily drop, hormones will easily become imbalanced, and muscle mass will easily be lost. Even if you lose 10 kilograms, you will easily regain weight.
When losing weight, the body is like a factory
For me, the key to long-term weight loss and maintaining good posture is the environment in the body, such as hormones, the level of inflammation in the body, and the gastrointestinal system.
Think of the body as a factory
-Your hormones are the managers and workers of factory operations
-Inflamed condition is how good factory machinery and hardware are
-Calorie intake is wages for factories as well as fuel
If the manager of this factory is an idiot, or if the hardware in your factory is completely rotten, then no matter how it works, it will create a pile of waste. Just as our hormones are already out of balance and the level of inflammation in the body is very high, no matter how much you eat, if you don’t solve the existing problems, it will easily accumulate into fat. It may be easier to understand with a few examples.
Hormones vs Weight Loss
This study looked at the effects of sleep and weight loss
Research source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20921542
Both groups of humans were calorie-restricted, but one group slept 5.5 hours a night and the other 8.5 hours. Both groups lost weight, but the group that slept less lost 55 percent less body fat and 65 percent more muscle mass than the group that slept more. It is equivalent to losing weight, but most of the loss is muscle mass, which reduces metabolism and makes it easy to regain weight later.
There is such a big difference mainly because poor sleep has a negative impact. The imbalance of the secretion of these things will easily increase fat and reduce muscle.
This next study looks at the effect of insulin sensitivity on body composition!
Research source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19471290
Basically, many chronic metabolic diseases, obesity, and poor muscle-building effects are closely related to low insulin sensitivity. Insulin is an anti-catabolic hormone whose main function is to store nutrients in cells. For example, after heavy training, our muscles will be more sensitive to insulin, and the nutrients we eat will be more easily absorbed into the muscles. When insulin sensitivity is low, the nutrients we eat are more likely to be stored as fat rather than absorbed into muscles.
We can simply say that the nutrients in the food eaten by people who are insulin insensitive are more likely to be stored as fat, and the relative fat mass will be much higher than the muscle mass.
To put it simply, the key to losing weight is actually to improve hormones, improve inflammation in the body, and add an appropriate calorie deficit. It is not difficult to achieve a calorie deficit. What is more difficult is how to choose the type of food that suits your body to improve hormones and achieve a long-term good body.
If you only pursue short-term weight loss and rely on a lot of calorie deficits to achieve the effect of weight loss, and then the hormones are still the same after the loss, then I can guarantee that you will gain weight very easily.
With so many ways to eat on the internet, which diet should I try?
When talking about losing weight in Taiwan 30 years ago, everyone would definitely want to use boiled meals
When it came to losing weight five years ago, everyone might think of using a low-sugar diet. When it came to losing weight in the past two or three years, everyone might directly think of the ketogenic diet.
I lost 30kg in 3 months on a low-sugar diet myself for the first time, so I used to believe that a low-sugar diet was the best way to lose weight
But after my long-term understanding of weight loss-related research, genetic cognition, and observation of students, there is no diet that is most suitable for everyone! Although it is said that high-carbohydrate foods will most stimulate insulin secretion, which in turn promotes the storage of nutrients into fat, some people are naturally good at metabolizing carbohydrates, so they can still be healthy and strong after eating high-carbohydrate throughout their lives.
For example, this study compared the responses of people with high and low insulin sensitivity to high- and low-carb diets.
Research source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2005.79
The study concluded:
-For people with high insulin sensitivity, eating high-carb and low-fat to lose weight is very helpful
-However, people who are insulin insensitive use a high-carb low-fat diet to lose fat, but the weight loss effect is not so good.
But on the contrary, studies have also shown that people with low insulin sensitivity have a very good weight loss effect on a low-carb high-fat diet, which shows that improving insulin is very important for weight loss, and it also shows that people with insulin insensitivity are more suitable
Lose weight with a high-carb diet.
So if you have been obese for a long time, you know that you eat carbohydrates easily, or you know that you have diabetes in your family and want to lose fat, then I would suggest that you can start by reducing carbohydrates, which is what we call low carb diet!
The Negative Impact of E-Levy on Mobile Banking.
DEFINITION OF TERMS
Mobile Banking is a service provided by a bank or other financial institution that allows its customers to conduct financial transactions remotely using a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.
Electronic Transaction Levy or “E-Levy” is a tax applied on transactions made on electronic or digital platforms.
ADVANTAGES OF MOBILE BANKING
Mobile banking offers numerous benefits such as ease of transaction, convenience, time-saving, managing your finances, and budgeting. Some advantages of Mobile Banking in remote areas include:
Financial Inclusion — mobile banking offers convenient and easy banking services to people in remote areas. Thus, it allows banking on the go and offers all benefits of a banking system to rural areas without the presence of a financial institution.
Accessing the bank 24/7 — Mobile banking provides ubiquitous banking services without the need to visit the bank to have access to services. This offers time to benefit and ease of transacting at a distance.
Cost-benefit — Mobile banking saves the banks the cost of building physical infrastructures (branches) and maintaining branches and staff. Also, reduced costs on the customer side since the burden of visiting the bank for services is eliminated.
Improving resilience in the face of poverty — Mobile money acts as both a savings vehicle and a means of transferring funds during times of economic or environmental shocks.
Strengthening the formal economy — For many micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), opening a mobile money account can facilitate access to formal financial services. Mobile money is well placed to address the issue of informality that blights many developing economies and hampers domestic resource mobilization efforts. Mobile Money enables ease of transacting, thus increasing business profits for MSMEs.
Facilitating economic growth — Mobile money has been shown to contribute to economic growth by increasing both productivity and per capita incomes
DISADVANTAGES OF E-LEVY ON MOBILE BANKING
The design of mobile money taxation policy appears to be the antithesis of a well-designed tax system. The disadvantages include:
Inequity — Mobile money taxes as currently structured to create inequity in the tax system. As the tax is mostly borne by the poor and users of the services are subject to additional taxation (unlike bank or cash transactions), the principles of both horizontal and vertical equity in the tax system are contravened.
Uncertainty -. Uncertainty and lack of transparency over taxation systems can have a direct impact on the operations of the tax authority, increasing enforcement costs, as well as discouraging investment.
Inconvenience — The administration of mobile money transaction taxes creates an inconvenience for MMPs who must calculate and collect the tax on the revenue authority’s behalf. There is an additional inconvenience for users of the service for whom remote digital transactions become more expensive or out of reach if they revert back to cash.
Inefficiency — Badly designed mobile money taxes have been shown to have a distortionary impact on demand for mobile money services. This in turn has had negative impacts on overall tax takes, as well as impacting the attainment of national economic and development goals.
EFFECT OF MOBILE BANKING — CASE STUDIES
The decision to impose taxes on mobile bank transactions will trigger so many problems.
Ghana — According to The Fourth Estate Ghana; Although the government projects a 24% decline in transactions when the levy is finally implemented, preliminary findings published by the bank of Ghana indicate the value of mobile money transactions had dropped by 3.2 billion in December 2021, less than 2 months after the proposal to introduce E-levy.
Uganda — An e-levy of 1% introduced in 2018 has led to an overall drop in the person-to-person transaction by more than 50%, and a 24% drop in industry transactions within the same year the tax was introduced according to a report by Global system for mobile communication (GSMA).
Congo — An e-levy of 1% was introduced in 2019. The government had to reverse the tax on cash outs only due to negative results of the levy on Mobile money users such as a decline in mobile money agents (unemployment) and high-value withdrawals by people.
Other countries include Benin (5%) and Cameroun (0.2%). In all these countries, the e-levy has imposed a negative effect on the economy and people. If we want to ensure the financial inclusion of people in rural areas, we need to ensure that we encourage mobile banking by withdrawing the e-levy tax.
Reference:
https://thefourthestategh.com/2022/03/16/e-levy-this-is-what-happened-when-other-african-countries-passed-it/
Purohit, S., & Arora, R. (2021). The benefits and challenges of mobile banking at the Bottom of the pyramid. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Business and Government Vol, 27(1).
Charles G. Kpan, Jr. is an Information Technologist with over 5 years of experience in the provision of Information Technology Services and an emphasis on Web Development and Visual Branding. He’s the managing Director of CYGEC IT SOLUTIONS INC. and holds a bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology from Blue Crest University, Liberia.