Working to Win: Accommodating Mental Illness in the Workplace

Mental illness is the leading cause of workplace disability in the United States, outranking every physical illness including cancer, heart disease and diabetes. The effects of mental illness cost businesses nearly $50 billion per year in the form of absenteeism (over 200 million days lost each year), lower employee performance, increased incidence of accidents and other illnesses, lost productivity, higher staff turnover and direct treatment costs. In all truth, this cost is less surprising when one considers that about 1 in every 4 adults suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year, and a Harvard study predicts that up to 50% of Americans will grapple with some type of mental illness in their lifetimes. Using the most recent census estimates, even the one-in-four statistic translates into roughly 62 million people!

Although the law prohibits discrimination against mentally disabled persons in the workplace, the economic impact of these numbers is so compelling that regardless of any concerns about disability discrimination lawsuits, employers cannot afford to ignore the problem. Even when a problem worker is fired, the odds are excellent that his or her replacement will be one of the remaining 62 million Americans with another type of mental disability, and the process starts all over again. The solution? Find ways to create a workplace that gets maximum productivity even from those with mental disabilities.

Our firm has developed a training program entitled, Working to Win: Accommodating Mental Illness in the Workplace. Joann Drust, Esq., has delivered this program to Society of Human Resource Management conferences, where it has been well-received for its easy-to-understand explanation of complicated areas of law, as well as its creative way of tackling the thorny disabilty issues that every employer needs to address. Some of the highlights of this training include how to:

- Navigate the confusion generated by the American with Disabilities Act and other state and federal laws about when and how mental illness is a protected disability;

- Fine tune your policies for both protection and positive effect;

- Harmonize the edicts of the anti-discrimination laws with the rights individuals have under HIPAA and various other privacy laws; and

- Learn how to reduce the cost of recruitment and retention by managing to get the maximum performance from the workers you have.

Fortunately, with medication, therapy and/or inexpensive accommodations in the workplace, employees with mental health difficulties can be capable of the performing and achieving on the same level as their other co-workers. Indeed, some of our greatest cultural heroes -- Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ernest Hemingway -- suffered from mental illness. Their legacy continues into the modern era -- Ted Turner, Jane Pauley, Mike Wallace, Buzz Aldrin and countless other Americans have grappled with mental illness, yet they achieved greatness in spite of, and perhaps because of, their disease. Who would not want one of these people on their team at work? Make sure you, as an employer, are doing all you can to make every member of the team successful -- the result is a better bottom line for all concerned.

To have Joann Drust, Esq., address your company or group on this topic, please contact 610-640-5373.