In the News
Managers Without Mental Health Resources Burn Out at Nearly Double the Rate of Those Who Have Them.
A new NAMI-Ipsos Workplace Mental Health Poll puts a precise number on something most leadership teams have sensed but never actually measured. Among managers whose companies provide adequate mental health resources, 45 percent report feeling burned out. Among managers without those resources, that number jumps to 73 percent.
The gap doesn’t stop at burnout. Ninety percent of managers with proper company-provided resources feel prepared to support their own teams, compared to just 61 percent without. And 74 percent of resourced managers believe their company genuinely prioritizes employee mental health, versus a striking 16 percent among those without support.
Why This Is a Manager Problem Before It’s an Employee Problem
Most workplace mental health conversations start with the frontline employee. This data argues that’s backwards, or at least incomplete. A manager running on empty, unsupported, and unsure whether their own company actually means it about mental health, is not positioned to model or extend real support to the people reporting to them. The resource gap compounds downward.
That’s the throughline in NAMI’s data: resources for managers aren’t a nice-to-have layered on top of employee benefits. They’re the mechanism by which whatever an organization says about mental health becomes something a manager actually believes and can act on with their team, rather than a policy they’ve been handed without the tools to deliver it.
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