Bringing Mental Health to the Top of the Cliff

At Safety on the Edge earlier this year, I found myself scribbling on my notebook during a panel on mental health. Not because the stories were new, but because they were finally being said out loud.

The panel brought together voices from across North America: Liz Horvath (Mental Health Commission of Canada), Georgia Bryce-Hutchinson (Mental Health Consultant), Pam Walaski (President of American Society of Safety Professionals), and Dee Arp (Chief Quality Officer at NEBOSH). What followed was a sobering, practical, and deeply human conversation about mental health, not as a wellness initiative, but as a core business strategy.

The Cliffside Story

Liz opened the session with a simple yet powerful analogy: a picturesque village on a cliff where people regularly fall off. Rather than installing a fence, the villagers build a clinic at the bottom.

“We’re doing the same with workplace mental health,” Liz said. “We wait for people to fall, then scramble to help. But the workplace is where we can make the biggest impact, because that’s where people spend most of their lives.”

It was a call to move upstream. Not just to offer support, but to design work itself to reduce harm.

Crisis is Already in the Room

Georgia, a clinician who regularly supports professionals in crisis, brought it home: “Your employees are my clients. The stress they’re experiencing in your organisations is what brings them to my office.”

She shared the stories of two clients, both on the edge of suicide, both signed off work for months. Her message was clear: if leaders don’t embed systems to proactively support mental health, crisis will knock on your door regardless.

And the real kicker? It doesn’t take being a mental health expert to change things. “What you can do,” Georgia said, “is fix the things you control: unrealistic workloads, poor manager training, toxic culture. That’s prevention.”

Between System and Culture

Dee Arp reminded the audience of the gap between what our systems say should happen and what actually happens day to day. “We’ve got ISO 45003 and frameworks galore. But if people don’t feel safe speaking up, or managers aren’t trained to listen, the culture doesn’t change.”

She told the story of an employee who was self-harming at work. Their manager, acting out of kindness, removed their workload, when what the employee really needed was connection and support. “We can’t afford to act without understanding,” Dee said.

Safety, Not Silence

Pam spoke from the perspective of professionals on the ground. Many health and safety managers know mental health is a risk, but they’re overwhelmed. “We’ve gone from ‘safety’ to ‘EHS’ to now ‘EHS + mental health’ without the training or resources.”

Yet, as Pam emphasised, the principles we already apply to physical risk apply here too: assess the hazard, design for safety, and put systems in place to prevent harm. “Risk is risk,” she said. “And we know how to manage it.”

Language That Opens Doors

Dee offered one of the most powerful shifts of the session, changing the language we use. Instead of asking “Are you okay?” she suggested leaders try:

It’s a small change that shifts the burden, opens the door, and signals genuine care.

This Isn’t DEI. It’s Design.

When I asked about the growing backlash to DEI efforts, and whether psychological safety could become a safer container for inclusion work, the panel agreed: this is about people. About their lived experiences, their realities, their whole selves.

“This is bigger than just race, gender, or labels,” said Pam. “It’s about how we treat people. And how we allow them to show up fully.”

Final Thoughts

What stuck with me most was the closing message: this isn’t going away. Psychological health and safety isn’t a trend. It’s where the future of safety is headed.

And if we want to lead that future, we need to move beyond tick-box interventions, past fruit bowls and mindfulness apps, and start asking harder questions:

What are the hazards we’re ignoring?
Where are our systems falling short?
And most importantly, what can I do today to make someone feel safer to speak?

We don’t need to be experts.
We just need to show up.

See Mark in Action!