AI is reshaping workplace mental health, offering innovative tools for personalized support and stress tracking. However, ethical concerns and the need for human connection remain critical. Marjorie Morrison, SHRM’s new executive in residence for mental health, notes, “We have to be really intentional about using AI to support, not replace, the human relationships.” Tune in to explore how technology can help foster healthier, more inclusive workplaces.
AI is reshaping workplace mental health, offering innovative tools for personalized support and stress tracking. However, ethical concerns and the need for human connection remain critical. Marjorie Morrison, SHRM’s new executive in residence for mental health, notes, “We have to be really intentional about using AI to support, not replace, the human relationships.” Tune in to explore how technology can help foster healthier, more inclusive workplaces.
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Nichol: Welcome to the A IHI project. I'm Nichol Bradford SHRM's, executive and Residence for AI Plus. Hi, thanks for joining us this week. We're diving into AI and the future of workplace mental health. guest is Marjorie Morrison SHRM's new mental health executive and residence, and the visionary behind Psych hub and psych armor. has spent over 30 years reshaping how we think about and deliver mental health support from military families to global corporations, and today we'll explore how AI can expand access. Enhance support and scale empathy without losing what makes mental health human. Marjorie, welcome to the A IHI.
Marjorie: Thank you Nicole, so much for having me. It is a, it is an honor, especially since you are my role model of what an executive in [00:01:00] residence at SHRM looks like, and I think I even got my title thanks to you. So I'm excited to spend this time with you.
Nichol: Well, I'm thrilled to have you on this show. I am passionate about mental health and just your background and looking at what you've done, you're. You know, you really have done the good in noble work, so I appreciate you being here and also being at SHRM. for our audience who might not know a EIR for mental Health does, can you tell us what is SHR M'S, executive and Residence for Mental Health?
What does that, what does that mean, and what are you going to be working on for your term?
Marjorie: Well, uh, it's a great question. It's ever evolving. I think I have the best job on the planet, so I'm having like, just the absolute best time. And in part, in part because h RMAs such a. Great vast place to, to kind of plant yourself. You know, I, I have to, [00:02:00] I often say to people, 340,000 members in small, medium, and large companies in urban, suburban and rural, you know, and in 180 countries, there's just the, the tentacles into really the workplace are tremendous.
So for someone like me that's spent my whole adult life, um, my whole career in mental health, I really do think the workplace is where we're gonna see. Like true, true mental health change and, um, for the, for everybody, right? Like it was kind of the payers and now the workforce, especially as they are all, you know, either self-insured or whatnot, they gotta make sure their employees are focused and doing their jobs.
So it's a great opportunity. My role is really, um, it, I have a couple different parts to it, but it's really helping with charms. Vision and strategy for mental health, really listening to our members, whether they are on the enterprise side, the companies, or on the, the orig, the HR, the [00:03:00] professional side, but really listening to them ad hearing what they need, hearing what you know, what they're dealing with, and making sure that SHRM is developing products and services and supporting our members to get them what, what they need.
Um, you know, at these very. Critical times. I mean, you put AI mental health together, like what could be more topical. And then I also get the privilege of sitting within the foundation. Um, SHRM has a 5 0 1 C3 foundation inside, um, the SHRM Trade Association. And that is where a lot of mental health for employees, this sort of what they call, um, untapped pools of talent.
So you're thinking about people that are formerly incarcerated or military. Um, sometimes people with disabilities. Older adults, you know, there's a lot of people that don't have degrees. So where, how do we help make sure that they are prepared for the workforce and that includes that they are mentally healthy and supporting those with mental illness or, uh, so, [00:04:00] so basically a lot of different things.
I just get to help with mental health and germ.
Nichol: Yeah. You know, actually that's why I came to SHRM too. The reach of this organization and around the issue of AI and how do we successfully not only get it into organizations, but also get it into society, being able to have the vantage point of this membership, which is all sizes. Over so many different countries. It's really a, a great place to impact good and healthy adoption of ai. So, okay, so I want our audience to know more about your background because it's really stellar. So could you share your journey in mental health and what inspired you to focus on making mental health support accessible? And where along the way, because we are an AI show, technology played a role?
Marjorie: Great question. Um, well, I like to say that I've [00:05:00] been in mental health my whole life because my father was a psychiatrist, and so when I was growing up, we would have these, like Sunday evening. Meetings. We were four kids in six years, so I had two older sisters, like lots of, you know, sister drama conflict, and we had to have the meetings where we had to talk about our feelings and all of that.
So I just joke that, you know, it was with me my whole life. And when I went to college and all my friends joined sororities. I joined the university crisis line and that was like my friend group, all of college. So I think it wasn't a surprise to anyone that I went to graduate school for, um, for, you know, to be a psychotherapist.
I got licensed in California as a marriage family therapist. I also am licensed as a licensed professional counselor, and I'm a credentialed school psychologist. So I kind of have some different things. My very first. Job was in San Diego, children's Hospital, outpatient psychiatry, and Nicole, it was working with some of the most challenging families that actually couldn't even [00:06:00] get into the clinic.
So I was doing at home, either at school or at home. Um. Counseling and I think it's a great way to sort of cut your teeth on some of the most challenging issues. 'cause you really, you, you see a lot. Uh, but then I had babies and so I decided that was like really intense. So about every five years I've had some kind of a new shift.
But I went into private practice because it was a little bit more flexible for me in those earlier years. And um, I worked with the complete opposite all, you know, cash pay high end. Very, very, very different set of issues. So I kind of went from one extreme to the other, and then in 2008, right at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, I got the opportunity to go work, um, at a Marine, at our Marine Corps base, uh, recruit depot where, and work with the drill instructors and at the time, drill instructors in order to be one.
You had to have a few deployments. So I was working with people who were at risk and weren't coming in for help. And um, I got there. [00:07:00] I don't know why I thought I could help fix 'em 'cause I had no experience working with the military at all. But I had like, you know, egotistical, I guess didn't know what I didn't know.
But when I got on base and no one was coming in, I quickly realized that we had an at need population and this is really ways AI can help so much. And like how do we get them the right care? So I had great leadership there and we developed a proactive. Mandatory counseling program, put all the drill instructors through it, and then we scaled it over at Camp Pendleton with infantry, and now there's versions of it that are all Marine Corps wide.
Really, uh, the model of being reactive with mental, proactive, I should say, instead of reactive throughout the, uh, DOD is. Prevalent in all of the different branches. Um, I then started a nonprofit because, uh, psych armor, because I had some great philanthropists who wanted to make investments and I felt like civilians like me that were only one less than 1% of our country serve.
So we have 90% of us that don't understand the military, like how do we support them? And [00:08:00] so I built psych armor as a place to create online free online education for anybody whether. A veteran goes back to work for employers, whether they are using commercial insurance and where their providers, whether they're using the nonprofits and where they're volunteers, like how do we upskill the 90% of us that are not military connected?
And then I ran that for about five years, and then a little over five years ago, I co-founded Psych Hub with Patrick Kennedy, former congressman. And the, the, the idea of psych hub, which is really my passion and we're to bring it back to ai, where we're gonna make such a difference is that. Most of us are trained as generalists.
The vast majority of mental health were generalists. Right? I was a generalist, and that means that if you think about it, every hour you're seeing something completely different. And we know you don't treat eating disorders like you would, um, addiction or depression or neurodiverse. They're all of these things.
Complicated grief have different evidence-based interventions, and they're called [00:09:00] that because they're more effective at, at symptom reduction and we don't know them. We're not trained in them, we're not incentivized to use them. We don't measure the outcomes of our clients. And so Psych hub was how do we upscale our provider base, get them focused on these evidence-based interventions, upskilling them.
Also, how do we train consumers and help them understand what they should be looking for, of which AI is gonna help? Super speed, all of this. And then we built our, uh, marketplace to con, uh. Make help make it easier for people to find care. So once I built that up, Nicole, and was ready for our next gen CEO to take it to the next level, I was like, what?
What's an area I haven't really been in yet? And to me, I felt like the workplace was the next frontier. And um, you know, SHRM, as you know, has this very innovative CEO with Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. And he's. He's
a forward thinking, entrepreneurial, really, you know, innovator. But I was like, I wanna go work with him and see what we could do.
So that was a really [00:10:00] long answer, but.
Nichol: No, it's, it's amazing the, and I love just the timeline of when you were, early into using a platform and a marketplace to connect people in need with people who have skills and then also sort of upskilling and educating everyone. Um, could you talk a little bit about mental health and what the foundation is seeing? Like what are, what is coming in from our members? And also research about, you know, what is the issue, what's the scale of the issue, and then what is workplace mental health?
Marjorie: God, I'm so glad you asked that question because I say that all the time. Like my, my sort of mantra in all of this stuff, Nicole, is mental health is not one thing. So when we say workplace mental health, like what does that mean? I don't even know what that means. Right? It's not one thing you, we, we would never do it in, in physical health.
Right? Like we wouldn't. Go to a cardiologist for broken foot. Right. But, [00:11:00] so I'm always trying to sort of break out this like, what is workplace mental health? What does that mean? So that's a great question. I think what I'm, what we're seeing in the foundation is really we're seeing a big shift. It. Around Covid.
Even at the times when mental health, you know, like you just heard, I've been in this space for a long time. I've seen stigma go from very, very real to the way other extreme, where now we have people wearing their diagnosis. They're proud of them, especially younger people. It's very different. They're so.
It used to be we were teaching mental health competency to workplaces. We were teaching them understand the difference between bipolar and borderline and all of these different things and, and what to do and how to support that model is shifting. The, the pressure that HR and people managers have to manage people's mental health is very, very, very taxing.
And I think the shift that we're seeing now is use empathy. Show that you care. It's okay to [00:12:00] create psychologically safe environments where people feel like they can come in and they can talk about what's going on, but then immediately know when you're going too far and get them over to the benefits to get them the resources or accommodation teams to get them the right accommodations.
Because when you feel an HR. We hear this all the time from our members. If you feel responsible for solving someone's problems, that is such a heavy burden to have all day long. And like as a therapist, we're trained, right? But HR doesn't always get trained on how to manage that, and it's not their job, right?
And so ultimately they gotta have employees that can get the job done. So I think that's really the shift that that we're seeing is. Is the training needs are different. The expectations of how involved HR managers should be and shouldn't be has changed.
Nichol: So what I'm hearing is that it's also really equipping HR leaders and for HR leaders should know. That, [00:13:00] well, let me step back again, back a bit. So, um, so one of the things that has happened is that are much more informed about what's going on with them, so they're better able to ask. I also saw that I. Um, know, in, in my work, I've been interested in human potential and technology for the last decade, and I've been working really actively in it. And so back in 2014 when I first started this work, I was showing up in spaces and saying. It isn't necessarily that technology is bad, it's that it's not good enough.
We are not pointing technology towards the things that really will help us heal, grow, and thrive. And to that end, we should some time and discover how we might use technology. For mental, emotional and social health. I call it mesh. How do we strengthen the
Marjorie: I,
Nichol: mesh? Yeah. And, and back in [00:14:00] 2014 it was really interesting because, you know, I had just come off the back of. Operating World of Warcraft, China, and all of the video games.
Marjorie: wow.
Nichol: for all the video games for Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Blizzard. I'd worked on the Activision Blizzard merger you know, through a CHRO, a variety of sequences. I became really focused and committed to, you know, helping, helping. All of us heal, grow and thrive. And because I had a background in technology, seemed obvious to me that you would use technology in these spaces. So this was 2014, and this was, you know, um, calm hadn't been founded yet. Headspace was still a meetup in London, you know, and they had, they had like a, you could get the video, the audio files. So it was like really way back in the day. And when I started talking about this, people would say like. You [00:15:00] know, on the tech side, they were like. What you're not building a champagne delivery app. know, like, let's solve the big problems. You know, how can I get champagne in five minutes or whatever. I'm being a little funny there. But, you know, I felt like people were really expecting me to do surface level. I. Things
Marjorie: Right.
Nichol: 'was very much in that space then, and that on the other side, sometimes when I would, know, speak to people who were involved in healing, growing, and thriving in 2014, they were not comfortable having technology in those spaces. you know, I, you know, I. I grew up in Houston, Texas. My dad was a plumber. You know, he worked with his hands. I, you know, have a very, or my orientation is that I, I really want people to have access, to the things that can help them heal, grow, and thrive. And I believe that technology makes things available, accessible, and affordable. [00:16:00] so we should use it. But figure out how to use it. And so that's just the context for this. What I've seen is post pandemic, like, because I like pre pandemic and post pandemic. the. To your point about the reduction of, of stigma, you know, before the pandemic, when I would talk about mental health and technology, people would, there was a lot of questions or people, or it was an over there problem, but I. With the pandemic, the whole world, everyone either themselves or they knew someone or loved someone who was struggling and it just completely changed. what I heard from your answer before is that you know, people are rolling into work with a completely different set of expectations around mental health. And our HR leaders are on the other side of that. And they're no longer in the place where it's like, oh, what is this versus that, [00:17:00] and where do I send them? And it's like they're really. Asking and wondering, what is my role? Where does it start? Where does it end? How do I support the person? And then also ensure that they're, you know, doing the work that we ask them to do.
Marjorie: Right, right.
Nichol: So from your
perspective, what does meaningful integration look like with AI and mental health, and how should we do it? Empathetically.
Marjorie: Well, I think, I mean, they're great questions. I think first we have to just sort of acknowledge that to your point, you were in on this early, there's like excitement and there's fear, right? About how, how to integrate it and it, and it's understandable. I mean, we're talking about using AI for one of the most sensitive.
Human-centered parts of life. So I think the fear comes from a real place. You know, I think people worry about as putting my clinician hat on, right? People worry about privacy or misdiagnosis or replacing the human connection. So like I understand that, but to your point, I [00:18:00] mean the real I. Opportunity.
It's not to replace human care, it's to enhance it. And I just, I, I believe, and I'm so like you, I'm so excited to see how AI can like help us get to the right care, to the right person faster, right? Like it can help identify patterns. We might miss like early warning signs, like, um, just for providers, like you already can see so much of the admin load that's being lighted by even just office management kind of AI and.
You know, it can guide people to like very personalized support. So I think that to your point, we have often an access issue. Not always, I don't believe the access issue is as bad as people think, but wait lists are long, providers are burnt out and like these AI tools can really help triage and scale access and do all kinds of, you know, all kinds of things.
So I think we just have to really think about like how, how we're doing it and. [00:19:00] Think about, like, I think about the complexity of the challenges in AI in like two ways. Like the first, it requires a nuance in data, right? So if we're only tracking absenteeism or productivity at work, we're missing the full picture.
So we need AI that can integrate like multiple data points, behavioral, contextual, even environmental, to make those meaningful insights. And then I think the second piece is. We have the opportunity with AI to really create personalized pathways. Not just generic nudges, but how do we help someone who's managing social anxiety and how does AI help with that different from someone who might have compassion fatigue or, guilt, you know?
So I just think
Nichol: Mm-hmm.
Marjorie: we think about how to integrate it. We just have to think about. How do we use these tools and make sure they're being built from a diverse lived experience? 'cause that's the other thing we're learning that, they're only good at how they were trained. So if we can get that right and we could actually [00:20:00] decode some of that complexity.
I think we could completely change the way mental health care is delivered.
Nichol: Mm-hmm. You know, one of the things that you said that's really resonant is that. One, there's not one mental health. Two, there's not one type of AI for mental health. I think a lot of times when people hear it, they think, oh, they're replacing therapist, or that sort of thing. But you know, in the entire, you know, uh, experience to mimic the employee experience, there's pieces where. You know, a different AI tool can make a big difference like many people don't know, as you mentioned about the matching problem. Um, so what that is for our audience is that if you go to a therapist, let's say you get in, I. You and like six months later, you, you get in to see someone you don't have chemistry with [00:21:00] them, you don't feel like, like if, if, if they reminded you of the person that you have a problem with or that brought you there in the first place and you become a rejecter. It is highly unlikely that you will ever go back. and so, you know, the ability to use AI for the matching problem, the ability to use AI to get people to the right solution, whether it's checking to find out what you know, if they do need drugs, uh, molecules, uh, checking to find out which molecules are the right ones for them. And so just like we're starting to get very granular in how a AI can support the employee experience in general, the same thing. happening for the steps in mental health and, and I just think it's really exciting. Marjorie, for audience, where do we draw the line between what AI can do to support. Mental health what do we think should always remain [00:22:00] human.
Marjorie: I mean, it's another great question and I think it, it goes back to the, you know, mental health is not one thing. And so I think the key with AI is knowing the difference between what can be automated and what absolutely has to remain human. So I think about it like AI can assist with the what and the what is.
Pretty much what you said. Screening, triaging, reminding, nudging, even helping people identify concerns they might have. It even can help with training. it can surface patterns, right? It can, help us with access 'cause we can do more specialty stuff, but AI can't do the how. It can't hold the space for someone's grief.
It can't read between the lines in a hard conversation. It can't provide that warmth of human connection, right? So there's this relational support, empathy, the clinical judgment. It always has to be human from my [00:23:00] perspective. So really like an AI tool. It might be able, like thinking about a workforce, like it might be able to help an employee check in on their stress levels.
I. Maybe it can help suggest a mindfulness exercise, but when someone's really struggling and there's real trauma or burnout or some crisis, that's when a trained human needs to step in. So I once heard someone say like, AI can flag the red light, but it shouldn't be the one driving the rescue vehicle. So I, I like that.
I just think we have to be really intentional about using AI to support, not replace the human relationships like we we're. We're at the heart of mental health, but I think done right. Oh, you know, we can do scalable, equitable care and, and to comment on what you were just talking about, Nicole, as far as like the different ways, we're already seeing AI training too.
I've been over the past 10 years in training. Like now they have AI technology, they can listen to a therapist while they're [00:24:00] in session and then eight. Able to provide that feedback to them to help them get better and craft their skills. So if you think about specialty care, like I, me, I mentioned like you can get better and better in that.
And also, um, we talk a lot about measurement-based care, which is really important. And we don't do it in mental health very well, which is how are we actually evaluating the care to see how it's working both from the client and from the provider. All of that AI can really assist with as well.
Nichol: You know, one of the things that I, I, I, I feel like I'm hearing in what you're saying is that sort of the, the same evaluation or the same way we're sort of. Walking through what in HR should or should not be delivered by technology feels very similar to, you know, any other, any other place, including mental
Marjorie: Yeah.
Nichol: where there's a big human role. Uh, because organizations are really just [00:25:00] people things together and, and so the people part's very important. So I feel like there's something to learn both ways. Um, okay, so to finish up, two, two questions. One, what can our HR leaders look for from SHRM to help them navigate this line? And then after that, you could tell us and tell our audience, they, they've heard this, they've heard this podcast, they've heard our conversation. do they do on Monday? You know, if they wanna be, if they want to. Deliver better mental health and workplace health. What do they do on Monday? So question one, what can they look for from us? And then question two, practically what can they do
Marjorie: Yeah, I
think on question one, I would say I, right now, Nicole, I'm going on what I'm calling a listening tour. And instead of thinking that [00:26:00] I know what's best for our members, and when I say that, I mean, I. Small, medium, large members. You know, like we talked about, I'm listening, I'm really listening to them in what they need and I, I, I hope that I get the opportunity if I'm successful in this role, is that we can help develop the products and services that.
They need instead of, like, I keep saying, we gotta flip the script, we gotta stop developing things, and then saying, here you go. And, and instead listening. And I am learning a lot and SHRM has a knowledge center and people are calling in and asking for me. And I'm learning from them about what their, you know, what their needs are.
So I'm not there yet. Of exactly what we need, and I think it's gonna continue to change, but at least I'm committing, I'm making, you know, a commitment to really emphasizing what their needs are. We're here for our members and so, um, the only way we're gonna constantly be innovative and delivering the right stuff for them is really getting in and listening to their problems.
So I'd say that's the first thing. [00:27:00] I think the second question, which is a really good question, um. I come from, I have a perspective on this 'cause I've seen this over the years change. I think that. Mental health, HR professionals benefits people. They work so hard to determine what mental health benefits there are.
There are so many point solutions coming at them. Everybody has the end all, E be all, and really nothing's getting any better. Right? Increase. Is going higher, engagement is going higher, so I guess that's better. People are using it, but it's not helping. We're still in the midst of a mental health crisis, and so sometimes more isn't the answer, right?
So the question about what is on Monday, I would challenge people to actually look at what they have. So I'm just going to go on a tangent here for a second. But you'll see why in Covid what happened was private equity and venture capitalists came in and invested a whole bunch of money in mental health and.
Where that benefited us is that we saw a whole bunch of roll-ups, right? So it used to be that all [00:28:00] mental health was what we call single shingles. Like I was one, you know, we're all separate, not part of something. Now you're seeing these massive roll-ups where these organizations are doing the back office stuff.
Enabled by ai, but things like scheduling, things like, you know, the platforms for video, telehealth and, uh, note taking and all of that, well, most of those larger aggregators or roll up, whatever we wanna call them, they take insurance now. So now for the first time, you're really seeing a lot more excessive, uh, like availability for care out of your typical, you know, Aetna, Cigna, Anthem, ance, UnitedHealthcare, Optum, whatever, insurance, and.
We're seeing more and more specialty care of these roll-ups showing up. So we have quip that does eating disorders and no CD that does OCD. All of these are covered by your insurance plans. So I think that the issue, in my opinion, is screening and navigating. We need to get employees knowing what they need, [00:29:00] knowing what they look for, and helping them get there.
It's not having to get more resources. This is my opinion. I don't think they need more. I don't think we need to spend any more money. It's knowing what they have and knowing how to create that navigation process.
Nichol: Okay. So
step one when you go back is just look at, look at and audit what you have see how it's working. So I, I like that. That's really tangible, so, okay. Thank you Marjorie. A big thank you to you for sharing your insights in transforming mental health with technology and keeping people at the center we wrap up everyone. our audience, I really encourage you to follow the A IHI project wherever you enjoy your podcast. And if today's conversation sparked ideas or gave you a new perspective, please take a moment to leave a review and help us spread the word. And you can find all of our episodes at SHRM dot org slash a ihi. for joining the conversation and we'll catch you next [00:30:00] time.