This has been an interesting week for mental health. The charity Mind has been superbly active in promoting the issues around disclosure of mental health conditions in the workplace and the stigma attached. It started with some excellent BBC coverage, during which John Binns talked about his experience within Deloitte. This was a great start to the week-long event that ends today. Cleverly Mind have used press, Facebook and Twitter to generate conversation. Using a character @the-elephant_ they created an interesting dialogue with people around the UK about their experiences in living with mental ill health, and disclosure.
On Tuesday Mind invited a number of interested parties to a summit at AXA's office in London. During the event the challenges and issues faced by employers and employees was discussed. Several things emerged and will likely be followed up in future events.
Disclosure is not easy, and mental ill health is a very personal and individual thing. We cannot view this issue as a homogenous group of people with similar issues and problems.
People are forced into hiding their true status and may even over compensate in performance and attendance so as not to get found out.
The issues are the same in large corporates as well as SME's. However within SME's the management of mental ill health conditions is not always formalised but is equally good and bad as large corporates.
Managers are ill informed about what to say and do when confronted with a mental health condition, therefore its no wonder they sometimes get it wrong. There is a need for more training, for openness and positive dialogue.
GP's will often have little idea of what adjustments can be made within a workplace and may make inappropriate recommendations that are unworkable. This is frustrating for the employee and employer.
Culture change is happening but remains slow and we all have a part to play in changing this. The coming out of a mental health condition is daunting for the individual, and we all need to think about how we might react.
Today I am taking part in a live discussion on the Guardian website to discuss this issue.
http://t.co/8Na89Mj via @guardian
No comments:
Post a Comment