WITH OVER three decades of dedication, Poppy Jaman has become a pivotal force in promoting mental well-being and race equality on a global scale.
Jaman's dedication to mental health is deeply personal. The tragic loss of a friend to suicide last year served as a stark reminder of the urgency of her mission.
“Every 40 seconds, someone somewhere in the world is dying by suicide. But when it then happens in your own network, which is inevitable because with that many people dying with mental health related challenges, it just brings it home,” she told the GG2 Power List.
“And it's well, I've started the journey, I love it. It's exhausting at times, I've had enough, I'm not doing this anymore, I'd be lying if I said that if I didn't have times like that. But then there's always something within the friends and family network that turn around and you think, well, this is not done yet.”
The personal losses she has experienced fuel her resolve to continue her work, even when the challenges seem insurmountable. Her journey began in the late 1990s as a community development worker in Portsmouth and then joined the Department of Health. Her bosses spotted her talent, despite her having few qualifications.
Jaman has never made a secret of her own mental health journey. She has been at the forefront of creating mentally healthy workplaces, being part of campaign group Change the Race Ratio. It is an association of UK business leaders who are using their influence to increase ethnic minority representation on boards and in leadership positions within UK FTSE100 businesses.
“Mental health isn't a static agenda, it's one of the agendas that's had the least research everywhere in the world because of the stigma attached to it,” she continued.
“Because it's the Cinderella of services, what we've seen over the past decade is a real evolution of what mental health actually means. We've gone from mental illness to mental health, mental wellness, and that's still changing. There's more science now, there's more research now. The correlation between our physical health, our environment and mental health, all of those have been proven, being proven with research all over the world.
“Brain health, brain science is another emerging field, neurastethics. And what does that mean? And the arts? What does that mean for mental health? People are actually investing in research and validating those. One of the main things is to stay relevant and staying on top of where the agenda is and evolving that.”
In 2005, she collaborated with Lord Patel of Bradford on the groundbreaking Count Me In census. This initiative, conducted from 2005 to 2010, aimed to address race equality within mental health services.
Now, it is time to return to this practice, she argued. “I think it might be time to ask the NHS Race Observatory, it would be what I'd start with it. I think it'd be really good to check how far we've come in 20 years. I think we're going to find some surprising differences and the nuances will have changed. That was the brilliant thing about this Count Me In census. It was one day every year for five years that we checked on every mental health trust, every inpatient unit. It's never been done before.”
Reflecting on the progress made over the past two decades, Jaman acknowledged significant improvements in the understanding and implementation of race equality within mental health services. She recounted her recent experience at the Pennine Care Trust, where race equality and diversity were visibly integrated into their strategy.
“It was really visible in all of their strategy that race equality and diversity were a real key part. And these are all the elements that they think about. I also went and met a couple of the services. The service managers were brilliant at this. So, I think there's been a real change from 20 years ago.”
As the founder and executive vice chair of MindForward Alliance, Jaman has expanded her advocacy to a global scale. The organisation operates in multiple countries.
“We're in Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, US, UAE, Dubai and London. Plus, we’ve also started some work in in Europe as well. Each country was run slightly separately with agendas like mental health and well-being,” she explained.
“We're centralising as well. So, one way of looking at it is where have we got actual teams. And then the other way of looking at it is what is our reach. We're reaching between 30 and 50 countries with some of the work that we're doing now. In terms of our global members around the world, we've got about a hundred very large companies, and we've got quite an ambitious strategy that we're launching this year which is exciting.”
Jaman highlighted the importance of leadership in promoting mental well-being. Transparency and acknowledging mental health challenges not only reduced employees' desire to leave but also increased motivation and team collaboration, Jaman revealed.
“We did a piece of research which was that 12,200 people were interviewed across 12 markets and there were three things that were crucial to creating mentally healthy workplaces and normalising this. One was something like 85 per cent said that if their leaders talked about mental health, they felt that the organisation cared and the direct impact of that was that people's appetite to leave the workplace or that business reduced, people's motivation increased, team collaboration increased.
“That I think is something that every company can do and it's free. Its leaders not saying I've got mental ill health, but just saying we, as an organisation, value mental health, mental well-being and our people in all of their health and this is what we are doing about it. That means that your staff retention increases and the reputation for your organisation increases and people want to stay and work for you. That was brilliant to discover across 12 markets.”
Her plans for the future include expansion within the US and Asia. One of the most anticipated events is their next global summit, which she hoped to host in India. This summit aims to bring together organisations like the WHO, UN, and Oxford University to address workplace mental health from diverse cultural perspectives.
Jaman is open about her own mental health challenges. She acknowledged that she has both good and bad days and has adopted a proactive approach to maintain her well-being.
“At the moment I've taken up running. My current way of helping myself stay on top of me and my world and my life is occupying the body to free the mind. 2023 wasn't a great year. I had lots of mental health struggles. But last January, I decided that I was going to take up exercise as a way of supporting myself and so far, it's working,” she said.
Additionally, Jaman has embraced art as a therapeutic outlet. “I run something called Sari Nasorry Fun Shops, unapologetically flaunting the sari. I teach people in small groups how to express themselves through the sari because the opposite of depression is expression,” she said.
“The sari can be worn in 100 plus ways. The principles are knotting and tying, and so once a month I run these fun shops. It's not a money-making thing. People donate to my charity, and they pay as they feel, and it doesn't matter if they don't pay. But I have some fantastic people come along from all over the country in groups of five to eight people, and we mess about in saris. So, a bit of injection of art in my life through the sari drapery. A bit of exercise and that kind of keeps me balanced.”
When asked what message she would convey to political leaders, Jaman emphasised the importance of self-awareness and compassion. She urged leaders to reflect on their own mental health.
“I would ask them to just pause and reflect on their own mental health,” she said. “I think until people can recognise what is their own stress signature, what is their own narrative on mental health, they can't really do anything for anybody else. It has to change, it has to start with us, on an agenda like this. What does mental health mean to them? How do they keep themselves healthy and then look outwards and go ‘OK, well, if this is what it means to me’, I think the answers for what we need to do and how we need to lead comes naturally.”
She also accepted that the cut and thrust of frontline politics could be wearing for politicians.
“Words like compassion, kindness, need to be part of the leaders' skill set,” she insisted. “They are in extremely challenging jobs, and I think it takes a certain type of person to be in those jobs and I think more compassion of itself, if there was more self-awareness, the more compassionate we can be. And I think words like compassion, kindness, need to be part of the leaders, skill set, it’s a responsibility.”
