Mental health and wellbeing (superseded November 2024)

First up, if you’re just a little bit concerned, or want to make sure you’re looking after your mental health, check out the guidance available on the Jonathan’s Voice website, in particular “Five ways to mental wellbeing” and tips for managing stress at work.

Jonathan’s Voice have also published two excellent guides, in collaboration with the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust, about mental wellbeing for IP professionals. The first is called “Protecting Your Mental Health and wellbeing: A guide for patent and trade mark attorneys”. The second, “Advancing the mental health and wellbeing agenda”, is written specifically for senior leaders, and explains how they can support the mental wellbeing of colleagues across the organisation as well as taking care of their own. The guides are specific to the patent and trade mark professions but no doubt more widely applicable in the IP sector. Do take a look: they’re detailed but not wordy and they’re informed by research. One reader commented on the first guide: “the succinct and precise information without the waffle is very easy to read, digest and implement.” You can download the guides in pdf format or order free printed copies: see here for the first and here for the leaders’ guide. Both are endorsed on the Mental Health at Work website. We’ve also recorded a half-hour video based on the first guide, which you can access here.

If you’re feeling bad and need someone independent and sympathetic to talk to, these organisations offer helplines:

• LawCare 0800 279 6888
  • LawCare offer a free, independent and confidential helpline for legal professionals (including CIPA and CITMA members). They also run a live chat service on certain days of the week, or you can email [email protected] for additional help. LawCare’s trained staff and volunteers have worked in the law and understand the demands of legal education, training and practice. The service is there for anyone who works in the legal profession – at any level, and in any kind of role – and also for their families.
• Samaritans 116 123
  • The Samaritans are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for everyone. Again their helpline is free. You don’t have to be suicidal to call them.

These and other resources are summarised on the “Need Help” page of the Jonathan’s Voice website. If you feel you’re in crisis, need urgent help or are even thinking about suicide, please please get in touch with one of them.

If you need information about mental ill health and its symptoms, or about available treatments and support, you could try the following websites:

• NHS and its mental health services
• Mind
• Mental Health Foundation
• Time to Change
• Scottish Association for Mental Health

Also worth a visit is the website page on “Resilience and wellbeing” created by the Junior Lawyers Division of the Law Society; this links to a wide range of information, guidance and articles likely to be relevant to IP professionals.

Please note, however, that although there are lots of valuable resources available on the internet, it’s worth remembering that not everything you read may be helpful, so try and avoid reading too much alone. If you’re struggling and some of what you read describes how you’ve been feeling, it’s often a good idea to talk it through with someone else (maybe a friend or a relative or a professional that can help such as your GP or a counsellor).

Depending on where you work, your employer may offer an employee assistance programme or occupational health scheme, or access to mental health support via a private health care policy. It’s always worth asking your line manager or an HR colleague. Your organisation may also have a trained “mental health first aider” you could speak to. Mental health first aiders are not, and are no substitute for, mental health professionals – but they can give you pointers to more appropriate sources of help.

If you belong to a membership body such as CIPA, CITMA or the Law Society, they too may provide access to support for their members in times of either physical hardship or mental ill health – again, it’s worth asking.

Some mental health problems can be caused, or exacerbated, by other things going on in our lives, for example relationship problems, physical illness, bereavement, dependants’ needs or financial difficulties. It’s beyond the scope of this website to list the support available in these situations, but do bear in mind that if there is something other than work that’s causing you problems, you may need to seek help with that as well. Again, the best advice is to talk to an independent professional (for instance your GP, or a LawCare adviser) who should be able to help you identify where the problems lie and point you in the direction of appropriate advice and support.

There is a lot of really good advice about connecting with those who may be struggling with mental health on the Time to Change website.  It’s well worth exploring this site, which includes videos and personal stories to guide and inspire you. In particular, take a look at the page in the “Support Someone” section entitled “I want to be there for my colleague”. The Mind website also carries useful information on “Helping someone else”.

The Jonathan’s Voice publication “Protecting Your Mental Health and wellbeing: A guide for patent and trade mark attorneys” also includes a section on what to do if you notice someone else is struggling. The guide was written for patent and trade mark professionals but is no doubt more widely applicable in the IP sector; you can download it, or order free printed copies, here. You can also access our video, based on the guide, here – and perhaps use it as a starting point for discussions in your organisation.

A follow-up guide, written specifically for senior leaders, contains valuable tips on looking after the people you work with, including advice about creating a mentally healthy workplace in order to prevent future problems. Again you can download that guide from the Jonathan’s Voice website, here, or order free printed copies. Both guides are endorsed on the Mental Health at Work website.

Some other general suggestions:

• Do something together and have a chat. (It’s often easier to talk side-by-side than face-to-face.)
• If there are any mental health-related stories in the news (and there often are), that might be a way of getting a conversation going.
• Ask twice. Sometimes people say they’re fine when they’re not. Again, Time to Change provide a guide to asking twice, which also helps if you’re worried about what to do when you’re not yourself an expert on mental health.

It might be appropriate to signpost your colleague to one of the sources of support under “Help for you” above. For example, your organisation may have a mental health first aider they could talk to. (If you’re a mental health first aider yourself, why not join our MHFAer support network, to share ideas and experiences with others in the same position?)

Of course, it can be a very hard decision for a person to trust someone enough to share their mental health difficulties. Please treat the information they give you with the utmost respect, tact and confidentiality. That said, if you’re really worried that a problem may be serious or urgent, it may be wise to let a manager or HR colleague know to make sure your colleague gets the help they need at the time they need it.

(By the way, we wouldn’t be IP professionals if we didn’t remind you that the information we provide here is not intended as legal or HR advice.)

A resource you might find useful as a starting point is the Business in the Community Mental Health Toolkit for employers. The aim of this toolkit is to help organisations support the mental health and wellbeing of their employees, and it’s designed with both SMEs and larger companies in mind.

Things you could consider:

• Create and implement a mental health policy or plan. Even the act of introducing a policy can create a more open working environment, by signifying to your employees that workplace mental health is something you are aware of and take seriously.
• Assess the mental health risks in your workplace and take steps to address them (including, potentially, better capacity planning and flexible working arrangements).
• Introduce training for your team members, for example in “mental health first aid” (see below), stress management or inclusive behaviour.
• Set up an “employee assistance programme” or other workplace scheme that guarantees your team members access to professional support when they need it.
• Introduce mentoring or “buddy” schemes.
• Encourage staff to discuss mental health in the workplace, involving senior members as role models to create an atmosphere of openness and candour.
• Use Mental Health Awareness Week as a focus for activities and events to raise awareness of mental health issues, or other similar events such as Time to Talk Day, World Suicide Prevention Day or IP Inclusive Week (see the events page of our website for a useful calendar).
• Take a look at the report of IP Inclusive and CIPA’s 2018 survey on mental wellbeing in the patent profession, which contains further recommendations for employers in the IP professions. By way of follow-up, there’s also a report of our 2019 survey,  a joint project with both CIPA and CITMA that extended to the trade mark as well as the patent profession.

Useful information and resources:

• The Mental Health at Work portal. This excellent site is curated by Mind, with financial support from The Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and signposts a range of free resources for those seeking to improve mental wellbeing in their workplace. It is a gateway to documents, guides, tips, videos, courses, podcasts, templates and information from organisations across the UK – including the Jonathan’s Voice guides. Mind apply a quality assurance process to materials that go onto the site so they can be trusted to be of a high standard.
• Our sample mental health policy
  • This template has been created by IP Inclusive in collaboration with Jonathan’s Voice. It’s free for our supporters to download and use in their own organisations.  Even if you only use parts of it, you may nevertheless find some useful ideas there for good mental health practices in the workplace.
• The 2019 best practice guidance on “Supporting wellbeing in the workplace” published by the Law Society
• The government’s 2017 “Thriving at Work” report, which includes recommendations for employers
• The Acas guide to mental health in the workplace
• Mind’s guidance on supporting staff with mental health problems
• The page on the Time to Change website about support for employers
• The excellent Jonathan’s Voice publication “Protecting Your Mental Health and wellbeing: A guide for patent and trade mark attorneys”. (This is specific to the patent and trade mark professions but no doubt more widely applicable in the IP sector. You can download it, or order free printed copies, here. You can also access our video about mental wellbeing at work, based on the guide, here.)
• Their follow-up guide for senior leaders, “Advancing the mental health and wellbeing agenda”, available here. (Note that both Jonathan’s Voice guides are endorsed on the Mental Health at Work website.)
• More IP Inclusive resources:
  • Recordings of our three webinars with LawCare, on “Mental health matters” (5 December 2017), “Why looking after your mental health is so important” (15 May 2018) and “Top tips for studying under pressure” (22 May 2018)
  • Toolkit on tackling mental health in the workplace, based on our May 2018 workshop “Mental health – the last taboo?”
  • Also from our May 2018 workshop, some notes on establishing a mental wellbeing framework, and a presentation on the IPO’s wellbeing programme
  • Recordings of our 2019 mental wellbeing webinars: “Mental health: time to listen, time to act” (14 May 2019) and “How the character traits of legal professionals undermine their mental wellbeing” (13 June 2019)
  • Recordings of our 2020 mental wellbeing webinars: “The mental health impact of working from home” (2 April 2020), “Mental health challenges in the IP professions, and what YOU can do to address them” (3 April 2020) and “Mental health first aid: help for the helpers” (24 April 2020)
  • Recordings of our 2021 mental wellbeing webinars: “Touch Network – an amazing story” (12 January 2021), “Building emotional resilience in ourselves and others” (10 March 2021) and “Taking back control & redefining failure: the masterclass” (16 March 2021, with the CIPA Informals)
• A recording of CITMA’s webinar on “Mental health matters: A proactive approach” (18 January 2021)

Visit our resources page to see what else we have available, or check out our news and features and filter using the tag “mental health”.

More about “mental health first aid training”

“Mental health first aiders” are individuals in an organisation who have been trained on a course to spot the symptoms of mental health issues, offer initial help and guide a person towards support. The course normally lasts for two days. It doesn’t train people to become therapists but it does teach them to listen, reassure and respond, even in a crisis – and potentially to reach out to someone before a crisis happens.

There are a number of organisations that offer training but Mental Health First Aid England is the only organisation in England permitted to provide mental health first aid instructor training licensed by Mental Health First Aid International.

All instructors deliver the same programme but they may have different styles. Check first that a particular instructor will suit your organisation.

IP Inclusive has a support network for mental health first aiders: see here for more information.

Please share…

Importantly, please please share your experiences as an employer, including the policies you implement and their effectiveness, with others in the IP Inclusive community. We’d love you to contact us with your ideas and feedback.