North to Alaska

I often boast that living in the Rockford Region means we’re no more than an hour-and-a-half away from anywhere in the world. Chicago Rockford International Airport provides plenty of get-away opportunities, and O’Hare International Airport covers the rest of the world. Which means we can take quick, non-stop jaunts to destinations that require others to book multiple stops and long days of travel.

And that’s how I rationalized a long weekend in Alaska.

Arriving in Anchorage on a Thursday evening and departing on a Sunday redeye flight gave me and my travel companions three full days in our country’s 49th state. Alaska also happened to be my 50th state visited, thanks to 20+ years of business travel and a 2008 assignment on a presidential campaign. In fact, I might have checked the box on Alaska back then with a press junket to Wasilla, but a Blackberry snafu sent me to La Crosse, Wisconsin, instead. (Which would also explain why several of you may be looking up “What’s a Blackberry?” right now.)

Lifetime travel goals aside, the jaunt mostly served as mental refreshment. A quick break to shake off the Midwestern been-indoors-and-cooped-up-all-winter mindset and trade it for deep breaths of mountain air and 17-hours of daylight.

Our increasingly anxious world is filled with economic uncertainty, global conflicts, social unrest, work stress, and over stimulation. All this is layered on top of the personal stressors that burden each of us as well as the stress we carry indirectly through the lives of our friends and family. Anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and other emotional traumas are taking a toll on us and our workforce.

Last summer, Forbes published an article about the toll of the mental health crisis on business, reporting, “20% of U.S. workers have daily thoughts about quitting their jobs and 88% feel burned out at work.” In addition, “12 billion working days are lost annually to anxiety and depression, and these losses cost the world economy $1 trillion annually, mostly in lost productivity.”

In determining a topic for our Community Series event on health care, we worked with board member Travis Andersen, president and CEO of UWHealth – SwedishAmerican Health System. Over the course of several weeks of generating and evaluating ideas, we kept coming back to the connectivity between mental health and physical health. Travis commented that, “There is no health without mental health,” and solidified our topic.

How are your employees coping with anxiety and depression? What affect is substance abuse having on work quality and productivity, not to mention health insurance costs? What can you do to support the health and resiliency of each of your team members? It’s not only the right thing to do, but ignoring the problem hurts your profitability. Join us June 26 for “There is no health without mental health.”

To explore this topic, Greater Rockford Chamber of Commerce has assembled a panel of health care experts to help us demystify behavioral health and discover ways to promote well-being in the workplace. The panel will expose the realities of mental illness in the workplace and share ways to promote a higher quality of life for your employees. Our panelists include: Travis Andersen, UW Health; Jason Holcomb, Region 1 Planning Council and Winnebago County Community Mental Health Board; Carlene Cardosi, Rosecrance; Laura Kane, Marshmallow’s HOPE, and Danielle Angileri, NAMI.

We’ve designed this event to be informative and practical. We want to support you in creating a healthier workplace. We also want to encourage you to take care of your own mental state—to take a mental refreshment break by intentionally stepping away from your routine to restore mental well-being. One small step on your own behalf won’t solve the world’s mental health crisis, but it may be the one small step you need to strengthen your health and model well-being for those around you.