Small business owners too overwrought for mental | Australian Markets

Small business owners merely do not have time for mental health.

They’re head of operations, head of advertising and marketing, head of gross sales. They keep prospects joyful and suppliers and overheads paid, and full an average of 15 hours of authorities paperwork each week.

“We sit and acknowledge that mental illness exists,” explains Jeremy Suggett.

“Then it’s, ‘Okay, let’s get back to that s*** storm that we’ve got to deal with for the rest of afternoon’.”

Mr Suggett has run profitable Sydney medical gadget business Cosuda for the previous 15 years however says when he has encountered difficulties as a end result of financial crises, adjustments in authorities coverage or sudden tax hikes – there was nowhere to show.

And even when there was, there’s no level getting a physician to put in writing “a letter to myself” as boss as a result of he could not give himself time off to deal with it anyway.

The 47-year-old says authorities has performed a function in “killing” small companies and no doubt added to the pressures he faces by taxing on forecast earnings.

“There’s no incentive … for me to grow my business,” he explains.

“Every year when I pay my tax and they go, ‘Oh Jeremy, you had a good year this year, well done mate. We think you’re going to do (even better) so we’re going to actually get you to pay that up front now’.

“I went by this 10 years in the past and my cashflow was simply depleted from paying tax. And I believed, ‘Well, that is it, what is the level?”

With the global trade war and cost-of-living crisis ever threatening, Australia’s two-and-a-half million small business owners are dealing with more external pressure than ever.

They are experiencing high rates of stress, depression and anxiety, and low levels of wellbeing compared to the general population, according to Wellbeing and Prevention Coalition in Mental Health and the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia.

Of 250 operators surveyed by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry last year, 34 per cent had received a mental health diagnosis in the previous 12 months, compared with 21.5 per cent of Australians aged 16 to 85 in Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

As well as the enormous impact on individual business owners, the loss of productivity is also having significant knock-on effects on the Australian economy to the tune of an estimated $220 billion annually, says Beyond Blue CEO Georgie Harman.

Small businesses make up 97 per cent of all Australian workplaces, contribute a third of GDP and employ over five million people, she says.

“We’re speaking about people right here, we’re speaking about households, we’re speaking about communities, we’re speaking about health and wellbeing,” Ms Harman tells AAP.

“We have not nailed the distinctiveness of the mental health wants of small companies specifically … whether or not it’s money stream, isolation, loneliness, long hours or the very fact it is actually personal: ‘It’s my id. I make use of my family and friends. If my business fails, I fail’.”

Personal relationships are deeply embedded in the day-to-day of running a business, Mr Suggett explains.

“I get actually invested in working with the people I’m working with versus simply it as a business transaction,” he says.

Council of Small Business CEO Luke Achterstraat says a lot of owners feel “the weight of the world on their shoulders”.

“Behind each statistic is definitely a household, an proprietor … who is commonly paying themselves final,” he says.

“There’s solely so many hours within the day … Often, by the time they get round to their own wellbeing or to their own wants late into the night … they realise they have more paperwork to do.”

Mr Achterstraat says instead of adding to the “crimson tape” for enterprises that don’t have in-house legal or HR teams, government should be focusing on simplifying it.

Diagnosed with depression and anxiety at age 19, Mr Suggett knows what steps to take when he is feeling the ‘overwhelm’ and lives by the analogy that it is vital to “put your own oxygen masks on first”.

But he’s in a minority.

While he always finds time to talk to contemporaries and contacts about their struggles, he doesn’t have time to establish a formal support network.

“You need another person to drive it as a result of you possibly can’t have the people concerned in it carry an additional load. It’s simply not possible,” he says.

Beyond Blue is one of few outlets running support services where struggling small business operators can seek free advice and assistance.

“All of our coaches have a small business background – they have the t-shirt and so they can completely join with the people they’re working with,” Ms Harman says.

“Because by the time they’re looking for the providers out, they’re have already reached disaster level … we have got to make it straightforward for them.”

Ms Harman says Labor and coalition election promises on mental health – both at or near to the $1 billion mark with a focus on youth services – are worthy of recognition and plug “quick and pressing gaps”.

But for a relatively modest investment, government could be helping small business owners too: “the spine of the Australian financial system”.

Mr Achterstraat is less inspired.

“We actually need to see either side pull their socks up with respect to raised insurance policies round crimson tape and tax reform,” he says.

Mr Suggett is more scathing about politicians’ “flowery statements”.

“It’s simply fluff,” he says.