Mental Health Awareness Week 2024 – Business toolkit for oral health and mental health

Mental Health Awareness Week 2024 is fast approaching, taking place from 13^th to 19^th May. As an employer, it’s important to support your employees' mental health. However, did you know that supporting your employees' oral health can positively impact their mental wellbeing too?

How does oral health affect mental health?

Dental issues can negatively impact your employees’ wellbeing. 65% of people reported that dental pain makes them feel down or grumpy, with a further 16% extending this to say it negatively impacts their mental health¹.

A lack of motivation or low productivity can also impact on normal daily routines such as brushing or flossing your teeth².

Furthermore, your employees may experience dental anxiety. Approximately 36% of adults fear the dentist, with an additional 12% experiencing extreme dental anxiety³. Bupa recognises that this is a barrier to improving oral health. There are lots of ways in which we can support your employees if they are experiencing dental anxiety. Our handy dental anxiety guide provides some tips and advice here (PDF 0.2MB).

How does this affect my business?

When employees experience poor mental health, it can affect your business in numerous ways:

• Stress or burnout within your workforce.
• Teams might be suffering with low productivity which means they’re unable to meet targets.
• Increased turnover rate.
• Higher occurrence of sick leave⁴.

At Bupa, we know that oral and mental health are closely linked, so it is important to support your employees with both.

View all the support and resources accessible through Bupa below and share these with your employees.

Oral health and mental health resources

Dental anxiety support

• Dental Anxiety Guide (PDF, 0.2MB)
• Understanding Dental Anxiety
• Worries about visiting the dentist
• Supporting children with dental phobia
• Dental sedation

Mental health and oral health connection

• How are mental health and oral health connected? (PDF, 0.5MB)

Other mental health resources

For your line-managers

• Open up at work (PDF, 1.1MB)
• Talking about suicide and providing support at work (PDF, 0.6MB)
• Supporting employees with social anxiety (PDF, 0.5MB)

For your employees

• Bupa Healthy Me
• Bupa Mental Health Hub
• Helping families live healthier, happier lives
• Work related stress

Sources

• 1: Bupa Internal Data
• 2: Natalie Asmussen, dentally.org (2023) Mental health and oral health: What you need to know. Available at: https://www.dentaly.org/us/mental-oral-health/ (Accessed: 16 April 2024)
• 3: Berkeley ExecEd (2024) The Impacts of Poor Mental Health in Business. Available at: https://executive.berkeley.edu/thought-leadership/blog/impacts-poor-mental-health-business#:~:text=The%20impact%20of%20poor%20mental%20health%20in%20the,4%20Evidence%20of%20stress%20or%20burnout%20in%20employees (Accessed: 16 April 2024)
• 4: Gov.uk (2021) Adult oral health survey 2021. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/adult-oral-health-survey-2021 (Accessed: 16 April 2024)