FLAME with Brad Hook
Mental Health, Leadership and the Future of Work
Mohini Venkatesh has spent nearly two decades working to improve access to mental health and substance use care in the US — and she's still hopeful. This conversation is about why.
From her vantage point at the National Council, Mohini sees the whole landscape: rising loneliness, burnout, youth mental health, substance use, and workplaces still learning that their people are whole human beings rather than job descriptions. We talk about Mental Health First Aid — the growing movement to make mental-health literacy as normal as physical first aid — and what it actually changes inside an organisation.
The through-line is leadership: the human skills leaders will need as AI reshapes work, why psychological safety isn't a perk but infrastructure, and where genuine reasons for optimism live in a hard set of statistics. A clear-eyed, hopeful episode for anyone responsible for other people at work.
In this episode
- The real state of mental health at work — beyond the headlines
- What Mental Health First Aid is and why it's spreading
- Loneliness, burnout and youth mental health as leadership issues
- Treating people as whole human beings, not roles
- The human skills leaders need in the future of work
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