Mental health and the workplace.

For those of us not lucky enough to have been born into great wealth, not working because we have panic or anxiety (or their cousin, depression) isn't a great option.

Trust me. I've tried it. For most of my life since developing panic disorder in the late 1980s, I've avoided working in crowded districts of the cities where I've lived, or anywhere where I might have to endure a busy rush hour to commute to or from work. Over the years I've had panic attacks during all kinds of commutes -- driving, and on buses, subways, and commuter trains -- as well as in elevators, on crowded business-district sidewalks, and while just plain sitting at my desk.

Too often, my morning commute has been one of hyperventilation and white knuckles. More than once, I've left work early because panic was pending or already full blown. Once, I even had a panic attack just steps from the door to the office building where I worked, and was compelled to turn around and go home rather than having to open that door. More times than I care to remember, I've turned down jobs that, before panic, I would have jumped at, whether because of the commute or my growing fear of offices in general.

For much of my adult life I've been chronically underemployed, unable to keep a job for very long, unable to secure enough work that I could do from home to make a real living. Luckily I've now found a full-time job that's interesting, pays well, and allows me to telecommute almost all the time. But I'm in debt, behind on my taxes. My credit score sucks worse than that Kevin Federline CD. I'm in my mid-40s, and I've only just gotten into a situation that allows me to start building a nest egg. I know intimately what it's like to live from paycheck to paycheck, from month to month.

In other words, the price of not working is equally as formidable as the price of going to work while experiencing panic attacks. Unfortunately, a degree (even an advanced degree) and a desire to do good work aren't enough, most of the time; there are few ways to build a career without putting in your fair share of face time with the people you're working with or for.

I believe I might have averted at least some of my problems if I hadn't felt compelled to hide my panic and depression from employers. In that case, I believe, I might've dealt with my mental health issues before they'd conspired to create an agoraphobia as sturdy as the one I've been blessed with.

Which is why I laud the efforts of a Brit named Jonathan Naess. Naess battled bipolar disorder while building a successful legal career, which he's since left to start a non-profit dedicated to fighting stigma against the mentally ill in the workplace. From the link:

"I think there is a really deep-seated and gut reaction to the mental health issue that's been around for hundreds of years," says Naess. "It's socially unacceptable."

To combat stigma effectively he says people "from all walks of life" including those in senior positions need to be visible and to use the exposure to prove that people who experience mental ill-health are not "tarnished, broken, sub-species". For Naess, this means focusing on an arena where people who have a mental illness are more likely than any other group to be discriminated against: work.

Recent research shows the extent of the problem. Mental Health: The Last Workplace Taboo, published last year by the charity Shaw Trust, concluded that there was "widespread discrimination towards people with mental ill-health". In its survey of employers, one in three said they thought people with a mental health problem were less reliable than other employees.

The study found that most companies do not have an effective formal mental health policy and that 71% of employers estimated that only about 5% of their workforce may have a mental health problem - a severe underestimation when considering that three in 10 employees will experience mental health problems during a single year. One in four people are expected to have an incidence of mental health difficulty in their lifetime. Naess says the need to educate employers "cannot be underestimated".

With this in mind he has for the past 18 months been establishing a network of professionals to campaign alongside him and contribute professional expertise. The list includes directors, chief executives, managers from the private and public sectors, lawyers and communications experts, and each with personal experience of dealing with a mental illness while sustaining a successful career. Naess admits that he was concerned people would be reluctant to sign up, fearing negative ramifications at work. "I thought there might be just two or three of us and I wasn't sure if we'd only get retired people." All of the volunteers are of working age.

Naess says he wants to use the collective business experience of the volunteers to convince employers to come to terms with the fact that people who are mentally ill can make good employees, and encourage them to put in place mental health policies.

An earlier look at this issue.
Archived PANIC! post about panic and workplace stress.