Accounting

FloQast Offers Wellness-Geared Resources in Honor of Mental Health Awareness Month

Every year, during busy season, we are reminded that mental health and mindfulness aren’t just buzzwords, but rather, something that needs to be taken serious — during busy season and beond. Given the long hours and massive projects, mental health awareness for accountants is particularly challenging — even in the best of times.

And let’s face it: Life has been pretty darn stressful for the last 2+ years (not that it wasn’t beforehand). Balancing professional and personal time will never not be a challenge, but it’s especially nerve-racking when the year-end close and audits are dominating your day-to-day.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 264 million people globally suffer from some type of depression. Further, depression interferes with a person’s ability to complete physical job tasks about 20% of the time and reduces cognitive performance about 35% of the time. Unfortunately, only half of those who experience depression or other mental stressors actually seek help.

In a lot of ways, things are looking more optimistic these days. While things look a lot different than they did this time in 2020, if we’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that there is no room to be flippant disregard for your mental well-being — regardless of what time of year it is.  

With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re taking a step back to think about how work and life’s respective stressors affect us on the inside. We know that accountants, in particular, are no strangers to unrealistic deadlines and regular overtime, which, of course, was compounded by stay-at-home orders and remote work. Until recently, mental health awareness for accountants was a moving target. We’re not mental health experts, but we do know what you’re going through at work. So, we’ve created a few pieces of content intended to help you decompress and have a little fun. We hope you’ll all take some personal time during a given workday to do so.

From a guided meditation written by FloQast CEO Mike Whitmire and performed by CPO Chris Sluty — both former accountants — to the best accounting-related coloring book you’ll ever see (yes, you read that correctly), it’s our goal to inject a little levity into your day-to-day. 

John Siegel

John Siegel is a Corporate Communications Manager at FloQast. Prior to joining the company, he wrote about Los Angeles-based tech companies for Built In LA. You can follow him on Twitter @JVNSiegel.