Sean: How can employers manage depression in the workplace? How can employers qualify feelings of sadness as reasons for employees not being able to come to work?  

JM: So I think having that time in order for your employees to have that safe space for them to let you know what's going on in their lives. It's very important to manage depression even before it starts. Meanwhile, when there is already depression, it actually depends on the level of depression. There is depression that is still normal. “Normal.” But there is depression as well where it's already considered clinical depression.

So when it comes to clinical depression, you need to be able to consult a professional already, professional help for that in order to help your employees and in order to manage depression. Besides what I mentioned earlier, what's important, not just for the employees, but for the employers as well is for you to really take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. So make sure that there's support for that as well for them to be able to know that there’s support from the company. And there's also a way for you to help them.

So there's a lot of things actually with depression, Sean. And just a few things in order for you to know if you're going through depression is that there are extremes. Okay? So if there are already extreme things in your life that are going on for more than two weeks already. Like if either you eat a lot or you don't have an appetite. Okay? Two extremes or you just want to sleep. All-day, you just want to sleep or you couldn’t sleep. So extreme things. And if there's no longer passion to do the same things that you ought to enjoy before. So those are just some of the things that you can look for, a sign if you are having depression already, or if your employee is having depression already. So I hope that helps.

Sean: That really does. I'm not an expert when it comes to depression. We've had a couple of people struggling with this actually. I wouldn't say I'm the most brilliant help they’ve ever gotten. But what I do believe about this topic, which is a sensitive topic, is that a lot of people tend to not feed their spirit. You know, it might be hard teaching to hear coming from me, but people who have faith, you know, who believe in God and believe in the spirit will understand what I mean.

We're not just meat and bones. We're thinking beings with a spirit. We consider the heart and the brain as important parts of our functioning bodies. The spirit is also a very important organ that's invisible. You can't see it, but it is as important as your heart and as important as your brain. And the spirit needs to be fed so it has kind of like an appetite, like your stomach. And if it is not fed, I think that is where the depression creeps in because you lose the appetite to live. Life becomes bland. It's lackluster.

It could be a slew of different triggers, but I think the root cause is always you're poor in spirit. You haven't fed your spirit. You haven't had the time to pause and think about what you lack in terms of faith, in terms of your walk with God, in terms of your personal growth and improvement. And a lot of people who struggled with depression, I believe, spend a lot of time not thinking.

We have, as a generation, lost our ability to think, really think. And sadly that's because of the advent of the internet and unlimited entertainment that we have. We just don't need to think. We can be entertained 24/7 today. And that I think contributes to the spirit of depression. I can't really say much about it, but what I do know is part of it, maybe a good part of it is about the spirit. And you have to feed your spirit.

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