MENTAL HEALTH IS NOT NICHE, IT IS EVERYWHERE.

In Australia, 42.9% of people aged 16 to 85 have experienced a mental disorder in their lifetime. That statistic is a wake-up call.

Mental health is no longer a quiet topic reserved for therapy rooms and private conversations. It is front and centre in boardrooms, group chats, and every workplace Zoom call where someone is silently holding it together. And yet, despite the numbers, we still whisper it. I have sat across from founders in burnout denial, leaders who cannot name what they are feeling, and parents pretending they are fine when they are not. What they have in common is that they think it is a personal weakness, when really, it is a public pattern. 

The modern world is heavy, our minds are juggling productivity pressure, financial stress, identity shifts, parenting fatigue, and a 24/7 digital feed of comparison. What we are now understanding is that mental health is not just about crisis management, it is about proactive design.

Last year, I worked with a founder who came to me saying he thought he had no choice but to sell. The business was thriving, profits were up, and team culture was healthy… from the outside. But what he was really dealing with was emotional exhaustion, imposter syndrome, and unspoken trauma from a family crisis he had buried under a mountain of to-do lists. It was obvious he did not need an exit, he just needed space and support. We built in wellbeing frameworks, restructured his role, and brought in professional counsellors for the leadership team. Six months later, he was still leading  with more clarity, energy, and joy.

This isn’t a unicorn case, it is just a business built with mind and heart.

When nearly half the adult population has experienced mental illness, we cannot afford to treat mental health as reactive or peripheral. It is central to everything, productivity, retention, culture, relationships, and yes… the bottom line. It affects your hiring strategy, your leadership style, how conflict is handled, how teams recover from setbacks, and how creativity flows. It should be built into how we structure roles, set boundaries, create leave policies, and lead conversations.

What do you think good businesses do differently?

• They normalise support, not shame.

• They build preventative care into their strategy, not just EAP tick-boxes.

• They train leaders in emotional literacy, not just KPIs.

• And they see wellbeing not as a soft skill, but a commercial advantage.

The fact is that high-performing teams are not built on hustle alone, it takes trust, empathy, and emotional safety.

Whatever your vocation, your mental health is part of your leadership DNA and if you are building a business or buying into one, like I am, this is non-negotiable. The future of smart enterprise is emotionally intelligent, clinically aware, and radically human. So next time you hear “mental health,” don’t think crisis. Think capacity. Think clarity. Think culture.

Because the future of mental health is not behind, it is leading the way.