It feels as though there’s been a spike in chef suicides of late. In recent years, we’ve mourned the loss of Anthony Bourdain, Jeremy Strode and Justin Bull, just to name a few.
The thing is, this isn’t just recent and it’s not limited to well-known chefs; it’s a long held problem in hospitality. The pressures of a fast-paced, intense industry causes strain on many people’s mental health. Of course Hospitality is not the only industry with high rates of suicide – Medical and Mining are others that feature on this sad list.
We’ve previously spoken about the factors that lead to a high rate of mental health issues in hospitality and small things we can do to start making changes (link to article: https://www.pinnaclepeople.com.au/news/mental-health-in-hospitality/43579/)
Something good to come out of such a gloomy issue is that many leaders in hospitality and starting to raise awareness and make changes from the inside to address and support their employees’ mental health.
This comes from chefs who have experienced their own struggles with mental health and want to help prevent others from going through the same thing, to those who have supported or, at times, lost family members to the dark side of the industry. This also includes those who develop problems with alcohol and drug abuse – something that is also at an incredibly high rate of occurrence in hospitality.
This is why Pinnacle People founded The Kettle Foundation. It supports hospitality workers battling alcoholism with rehabilitation and education.
It’s also important that as a wider communitywe’re becoming more aware of the problems, and are talking about it and how to help the situation.
Hospitality is an amazing industry and is full of people with passion who find great joy in what they do. Let’s work to keep that spirit alive and thriving.