Today marks the 10th Anniversary of Rethink starting the annual World Mental Health Day amongst its’ other campaigns. This year’s special focus is on Mental Health in the workplace which I have quite a lot of experience in the care, or lack thereof offered by companies.
I’ve experienced both the best and the worst treatment of mental health in various places I’ve worked and even a contrast within one job. Many of us who have a mental illness (I don’t like to say suffer anymore as to me it sounds weakening and trust me those who live with a mental illness are some of the strongest people you will ever meet!) are afraid to disclose or speak up about having a mental illness for fear of being mocked or people thinking they aren’t capable of doing their job.
My first experience of mental health in the workplace was as a buyer in a company who repaired photo and x-ray machines. It was an incredibly fast paced and stressful workplace, I was often on the receiving end of a barrage of abuse from managers if orders went wrong or were delayed in their shipping (all beyond my control). I had two periods of being signed off in the 4 years I was there, the first was when I was made supervisor of the department and the added stress of being screamed at by one of the managers day in day out caused my self-harming to escalated to a serious daily habit. At the time I was writing a MySpace (ask your parents kids) detailing the stress I was under (without naming the company or employees involved so absolutely anonymous) and a well-meaning friend in the office spoke to HR as she was concerned for my well-being and had witnessed my treatment for herself.
The lady in HR was fantastic, she understood and signed me off for two weeks to give me an immediate break for the situation. When I came back my return to work was dealt with by my manager and not HR, my line manager (an older gentleman) told me that with immediate effect I was to step aside from the role and he “sincerely hoped I’d learnt the error of my ways”. Looking back I can’t believe that it was suggested that being ill or struggling with the attitude of managers was some kind of error on my part. But at 20 years old and trying to cope with aggressive management I just accepted it.
My next period of being signed off was for a month 3 years later. A large amount of staff had been made redundant, my team went from 3 of us to just myself. Once again all the responsibility landed on me along with the hassle from management. My stress levels became unbearable once again and my GP signed me off for a month. When I returned to work I had a brief meeting with my manager and a member of HR (The lovely lady from before was long gone after being told she was ‘taking the side of the staff too often’ vs management) and explained the reasons why I had been signed off. No discussion was had about strategies that could help reduce my stress and my problems were just swept under the carpet and my condition ignored. No phased return to work was proposed and I went straight back into a 6 day week. All through my time with the company I was made to feel inadequate for struggling with the stress and daring to be ill and also ashamed to be trying to cope with my depression and anxiety.
You may have read in my blogs from 2014/15 about the troubles I had in my last job in relation to how my illness was received and dealt with. When I first started I was open in both my interview and with my colleagues when I’d gotten to know them about being ill. Initially the reception was great, I was very supported – given time off for counselling sessions arranged by the department and touched base with managers frequently so they could check how I was doing. This all changed one day back in March 2014 when we discovered that a memory stick I’d returned in the post to a nursing home had gone missing. Whilst I took full responsibility for the missing stick as it was sent out ‘on my watch’ the repercussions went further than that. All of my previous work was under scrutiny and any mistakes that I’d made were suddenly dragged into light, a lot of these mistakes were made whilst I was changing across medications from an anti-depressant to a mood stabiliser which was a pretty big shift with a lot of side effects.
The effect of the scrutiny meant that I made mistakes through nervousness and lack of confidence sent my moods into haywire and my anxiety through the roof. I returned to self-harming after nearly a year ‘free’ to cope with the noise created in my brain. I won’t go into all the details again as I’ve been over and over them in the past but basically I was accused of ‘playing the mental health card to make it difficult for them to put me on Performance Management’. I basically went from a promising member of staff who copes fantastically well with her illness to a liability hiding behind her illness purely to make things difficult for them. Thankfully I’m well shot of that job but I am sad at the way it ended as I really enjoyed my work and the people I worked alongside.
I work under the Temporary Staff Bank at my local hospital now doing basic admin, sending out letters and filing etc. Being on a technically zero hours contract means that in theory I can have time off whenever I want which is helpful for appointments etc. However I have struggled with attitudes towards my problems again, I have always been very open in this job as previously but due to various bad patches I went through last year and earlier this year (Particularly around losing both Kay and Stelly within a few months of each other) I had a lot of ‘sick days’. Whilst I am not obliged to work a ‘shift’ and required to let my line manager know at least an hour before I would be due to start (I used to leave a message 2 hours in advance) this still caused a lot of problems. It was suggested that the amount of time off I’d had would be “understandable if you’d broken your leg”. Unfortunately demonstrating that mental vs physical health discrimination is alive and (not so)well still. The flip side is that the girls I work with are amazing, they support me and always cheer me up on a bad day.
Hopefully this year’s focus on Mental Health in the workplace will not only educate employers about their duties towards the wellbeing of their employees and the importance of supporting and understanding them, but also empower those with mental illness to feel confident in speaking up about their condition and asking for the help that they need.
Love Jen
XxxX
