The tragic death of a celebrity as a result of depression inevitably creates awareness in the media on the prevalence of mental illnesses in our society. Such illnesses have a devastating effect on both victims and those who share their lives. The death of Robin Williams has once again shown that mental illness could affect anyone irrespective of one’s wealth, age, career success or failure, temperament, or social status.
In the last few weeks the international media reported on some scientific studies that highlight that many people suffer from some form or other of mental illness. Aristotle once said: “No great genius has ever existed without a touch of madness”. Many would agree that often people with mental health problems could make our lives richer and more interesting as a result of their talents.
But generally discussing mental illnesses is taboo, not just in family circles but especially in the workplace. The new president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Professor Simon Wessley, claims that “less than a third of people with common mental health problems get any treatment at all – a situation the nation would not tolerate if they had cancer”. When one considers that one in four of us will experience some form of mental illness over the period of one year, it is indeed worrying that so few people are in fact getting help for their illness.
A study by the Irish mental health organisation Headstrong last year reported that one in 10 young people have serious mental health issues that prevent them from functioning normally. The founding director of Headstrong, Tony Bates, sends a serious warning signal: “If we don’t intervene now, as a country, and make our young people’s mental health a national priority we are just storing up and escalating entrenched mental health issues for the future.”
Many fret about the lack of awareness that our health authorities seem to have on the serious health issues that our society faces in the next three decades.
Chronic illnesses that affect both old and young will increase exponentially as our population ages and our style of lives become more stressful. In a future article I will comment on the effects that the spread of dementia will have on our economy.
Chronic illnesses that affect both old and young will increase exponentially as our population ages and our style of lives become more stressful
Today my concerns are about the thousands of workers who are affected by some form of mental illness and the way that this impacts on their families as well as their colleagues in the place of work.
Mental Illness at Work is a book that was recently published in the UK. Authors Mary-Clare Race and Adrian Furnham go into great detail about the different forms of mental illnesses that are common in most workplaces. Depression, various personality disorders, especially borderline personality disorder, as well as most forms of substance abuse (including alcohol), often change the personality of people and makes it difficult for those around them to decide how to deal with such people.
Most business managers are totally unprepared to even identify mental health problems in their workforce, much less help persons affected by such problems.
The economic effects of having workers with mental illnesses are obvious; absenteeism, time off to attend for treatment, and internal personal conflicts that sap the energy of the organisation are just some of the costs of dealing with such workers.
There are, of course, varying degrees of severity of these illnesses.
Managers primarily need to distinguish between mental anxiety and extreme illness, and to be able to anticipate the severity and length of an illness. It is quite disturbing to hear of cases where irresponsible workers fake a mental illness to get work concessions from their employer or to be boarded out of work prematurely. Unfortunately, such disgraceful tactics are sometimes supported by medical professionals who are quite happy to declare a person mentally ill and unfit for work when in fact he or she is quite capable of continuing to work productively. Such abuse only makes it harder for genuine mental health victims to get the support that they need.
The time is right for a national strategy for dealing with chronic illnesses that will have an inevitable high cost on our society and economy. We could start by training our business management students to understand some of the more common signs of mental illness so that they can intervene as early as possible to deal with mental health problems in the workplace.
johncassarwhite@yahoo.com