I see with no surprise, Safety suggesting a re-think on mental health. Yet again, this confirms the simple reality that Safety loves to talk to itself about what it doesn’t know. If you want to know about Ethics, Culture or Anthropology, ask a safety engineer. Didn’t you know, if you need a source of living water you just drink from a toilet.

What amateur outfit would seek expertise where there Is none? (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-the-expert-in-everything-and-the-art-of-learning-nothing/ )

And where would any safety fount of knowledge lead? Of course, to the Work Health Safety Act, the Bible for safety fundamentalism. As this source of mental health expertise states:ealth Safety Act\

‘This would then point us towards a risk assessment, the boiler plate from which all informed strategy can be found’.

This is how the industry ends up with chemical engineers proclaiming themselves as experts in culture and then telling you not to talk about it.

Don’t you know, when you have a psychosocial ‘hazard’, you just need to consult the Safety Act, Regulation and do a risk assessment, implementing the hierarchy of controls!

All of this is dangerous stuff.

I know, let’s get in a kick-boxer to lecture on depression. Let’s get a defence expert to lecture on resilience. Let’s get an engineer to lecture on people skills. Let’s get a safety advisor to lecture on brain surgery.

But hold on, if you click on the link in the article, you find out yet again that, there’s something to be sold. There’s an event to market. The same happens when you look at the marketing of HOP, where slogans are turned into principles, truths and methods (https://safetyrisk.net/the-blame-game-of-hop/) that don’t exist. Just apply any level of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) this stuff, and you find out quickly that it’s all about marketing traditional safety in new spin.

This article in SHP is just that – a marketing exercise masked as expertise in something that it knows nothing about. It’s like reading how HOP talks about ‘better questions’ with no expertise in questioning skills. If you want to know about mental health or intelligence in questioning, don’t listen to Safety.

One of the strategies Safety is good at, is headlines that have no connection to the content. This is a regular strategy of HOP too. So often the title is the ‘hook’ is to sell more HOP, that has no methodology or methods. And like this SHP article, is packaged in the name of what it’s not, what Safety does best, markets what it is by what it isn’t. You just have to know the safety code (https://safetyrisk.net/deciphering-safety-code/).

In this article in SHP, there is nothing about ‘rethinking mental health’, isn’t that a surprise. Of course, there is no questioning of: the Safety curriculum, the incompetence of the sector in mental health, the nonsense of psychosocial ‘hazards’ or any useful strategy to tackle the most complex of issues.

Nothing new, just more traditional safety, selling more traditional safety.

If you actually want to know about mental health perhaps start here:

Morrison-Valfre, M., (2022) Foundations of Mental Health Care. Elsevier, London.

And quickly find out all that Safety doesn’t know.

If you really want to harm people in their psychosocial condition then make sure you go to Safety for advice on mental health.