The Link Between Mental Health and Emergency Readiness

While organisations increasingly invest in both wellbeing programmes and crisis protocols, the two are often treated as separate disciplines, but in practice, mental health plays a critical role in how people respond to emergencies and how well leaders can manage them.

If we don’t connect the dots between psychological safety and incident readiness, we leave risk on the table. And in high-pressure scenarios, that can cost lives.

Mental health isn’t just a welfare issue—it’s a risk factor

According to Mind’s Workplace Wellbeing Index, over 60% of UK employees say their mental health affects their ability to concentrate at work. Add in stress, fatigue, or anxiety, and that can translate into delayed responses, miscommunication, and poor judgment during high-stakes situations.

What happens if your key incident lead freezes under pressure due to burnout?

What if a lone worker under psychological strain forgets to check in, or dismisses a warning alert because they feel disengaged?

These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re unfolding quietly across sectors—from social care to logistics to utilities.

What we’re not measuring—but should be

Safety protocols tend to assume a baseline of cognitive and emotional capacity: that people will respond rationally, promptly and clearly. But anyone familiar with trauma science or high-pressure psychology knows that’s not always the case.

Yet few incident management systems or training programmes currently factor in:

• The impact of chronic stress or trauma on response speed
• The likelihood of missed alerts during depressive episodes
• How anxiety or PTSD may affect decision-making during evacuations
• The risk of silence from lone workers who feel unsupported or unwell

If we’re not measuring that, we’re not managing it.

Mental readiness must be built into the system

At Locate Global, we advocate for an approach that sees mental health as embedded in the safety landscape, not adjacent to it. That includes:

• Two-way communication: Tools that allow workers to discreetly raise concerns or signal that they’re not okay, without requiring a phone call or formal escalation.
• Customised escalation logic: So that missed check-ins, silence, or irregular behaviour from high-risk individuals prompt intervention, not punishment.
• Training that normalises stress response: Ensuring crisis teams and line managers understand common psychological reactions, and can support colleagues accordingly.
• Wellbeing-informed alerting: For example, delaying non-critical notifications for individuals flagged as high-stress, or tailoring comms tone during incidents to avoid fuelling panic.

Safety isn’t just about hard hats and fire drills. It’s about whether the person receiving that alert is mentally equipped to act on it.

Leadership has a new responsibility

Mental health isn’t soft. It’s operational. And it’s now part of a leader’s duty of care, particularly when incidents involve fast response times, lone workers, or unpredictable environments.

Progressive organisations like the British Safety Council and IOSH are beginning to emphasise this connection. As noted by IOSH:

“Mental health is fundamental to workplace safety—it affects risk perception, behaviour, and resilience.”

The next phase of health and safety leadership must move beyond compliance and towards holistic readiness. That means asking not just “Are they trained?” but “Are they coping?”

Closing the gap between culture and technology

We’re often asked whether software can “fix” mental health-related safety risks. The truth? It can’t. But it can create an environment where those risks are recognised, surfaced early, and acted on responsibly.

With the right tools like role-aware communications, silent alerts, and real-time worker visibility, leaders can ensure no one falls through the cracks simply because they weren’t in the right mental state to ask for help.

Want to explore how your incident planning supports psychological safety? Speak to a Locate Global advisor for a confidential review of your system’s readiness—both mental and operational.