Recorded: June 16, 2022
This week on Snap Out of It! The Mental Illness in the Workplace Podcast with Natasha Tracy, I’m talking with, well, me! I’m going to be sharing my own story of what it’s like to work with a mental illness. I’m going to talk about mental illness stigma in the workplace and finally leaving the workplace because of mental illness. I’m also going to talk about some basic statistics about why mental illness in the workplace matters and answer any questions you may have.
Make sure you tune in live or submit your questions early so the conversation can be shaped by you! If you’re curious about what people with mental illness go through in the workplace, this is the episode for you.
The podcast is now available across podcast platforms:
- Spotify (follows)
- Apple Podcasts
- Google Podcasts
- Sticher
And elsewhere.
The podcast is now available across podcast platforms like Spotify (above), Apple Podcasts, Sticher, and elsewhere.
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About Natasha Tracy
Natasha Tracy lives with bipolar disorder and works as an advocate, speaker, writer, and podcast host. She previously worked in the technology sector as a program manager at a major software company. She studied and worked with bipolar disorder for more than a decade. Now, she has authored a book, is writing blogs, delivering keynotes, and winning awards. For more about Natasha, please see here.
Transcript
(This transcript is auto-generated. Please excuse the mistakes.)
Natasha Tracy (00:04):
Hi folks, welcome to Snap Out of It! The Mental Illness in the Workplace Podcast with me, Natasha Tracy today, I’m I interviewing kind of me. I’m going to be talking about my own experience, working with a mental illness. I’m also going to be talking about the effects of anxiety and depression in the workplace, and I’ll be taking your questions. So don’t forget to pop them into the comment box wherever you’re watching, and I’ll try to answer them today. But before we get to my story, I just want to remind people that while mental health in the workplace is an extremely important topic. I’m actually here to talk about mental illness in the workplace. So 20% of people have a diagnosable mental illness, these range from minor to severe, but they do have them. And these are the people who often get left out of the conversation when it comes to mental health.
Natasha Tracy (00:54):
So that’s who I want to shine the spotlight on those with mental illness. So, first of all, I’m gonna tell you a little bit more about me. So I’m Natasha and I have been working as a professional writer, speaker advocate, all that kind of stuff for 19 years now. More anyway, a lot of years now. So almost a couple of decades, and I’ve been doing this for a long time. Basically, well, because I dis discovered that it was actually very helpful for people. Initially, I started my writing just in a corner of the internet anonymously, and then a friend of mine who had been reading my work said to me, you know, you’re saving people’s lives, right? And I didn’t believe him actually for a second, but eventually, someone emailed me and they said, thank you for saving my life.
Natasha Tracy (01:52):
And this was a big shock to me that someone would say that to me, but they did. And basically that convinced me that what I do as a writer advocate and speaker, that sort of thing is actually very worthwhile to other people. And not just me, because of course I started writing just for my own benefit. Now it was about 14 years ago when I started writing for HealthyPlace.com. I started a blog there called Breaking Bipolar. So I actually have two blogs, one at HealthyPlace.com and then one at natashatracy.Com and they’ve been running simultaneously for the last 14 years. I’ve spoken across north America both in Canada and the United States. And I’ve also written a book it’s called Lost Marbles: Insights into My Life with Depression and Bipolar. And basically I have had a great career and I just fell into it. And I fell into it because I got laid off from a major tech company.
Natasha Tracy (02:50):
And that major tech company is a lot about the experience that I’m actually gonna be talking about in just a little bit. But I was laid off there in 2009, 4,000 people were actually laid off that day and I couldn’t get another job unfortunately for me because 4,000 people had been laid off all in one day. So my friend said to me, why don’t you be a writer? And I said to him, I don’t know anything about being a writer. And he said to me, it’s really easy. All you do is print up a business card that says writer on the front of it. So I did that and then I started looking for things on Craigslist. And as I said, I started writing for healthy place.com and basically I fell into a career as a professional advocate. And now I’m here hosting a podcast for you about mental illness in the workplace.
Natasha Tracy (03:42):
So my history with mental illness is varied and long. I’ve been dealing with mental illness, bipolar disorder, primarily for the last 24 years. And some would argue I had it even before then. So basically I, my entire working career, I have had bipolar disorder. So I don’t have a lot to compare it to, but I do know the effects that mental illness has had both on me and my work life and my career overall. And they are quite drastic because it is a serious mental illness, bipolar disorder, of course, any mental illness, no matter where it lands can have an impact on your career. So I have been on every medication cocktail. You can possibly imagine I’ve had vagul nerve stimulation therapy surgery, which is actually a surgical implant for treatment resistant depression. I’ve been through electroconvulsive therapy ECT sometimes known as shock therapy.
Natasha Tracy (04:43):
And of course I’ve had every kind of therapy psychotherapy you can possibly imagine. I tend to be very treatment resistant and treating me is well, a job that I’m glad that I don’t really have, because it is actually very difficult. I tend not to take well to things and I often get way too many side effects for a medication to be useful. So it’s very difficult today. I function with a cocktail of medications and to be clear, I actually hate that, but it is the thing that keeps me functional. It is the thing that keeps me here today. So it’s something that’s very, very important in terms of my treatment plan.
Natasha Tracy (05:25):
So my experience with mental illness in the workplace, as I said, it’s basically been my entire career. And it, so from the time when I was diagnosed, when I was 19 or 20 I was working at that point. And then of course I work now, but I’m not in a formal workplace anymore. So in a workplace when I was very young, I would have out of control mental illness symptoms and not know what to do about them basically, because I was so young and my journey with mental illness and the stress and the anxiety and the depression and everything would get to be so much for me that I couldn’t handle it at home or at work. Now, I suppose the thing to do, would’ve been to take some time off, but that was never really an option for me because I really needed the money.
Natasha Tracy (06:17):
So when I was 20 years old, for example, I was in university. I needed that money to continue my studying. So I would do things, anything to get through a shift. And that included even self-harm, I would actually, I remember going to the bathroom self-harming and going back to work. That was something that I did because I just had to make it through that shift. Of course, as I got better and as I learned more, and as I gained more coping skills, that’s not something that I continued to do. But as a young person, it is something that I experienced now when I got into a more professional arena. So when I was about 24, I got into tech and I was working at a very small tech company and that had its pluses and minuses. The pluses were that it was attended to be less formal.
Natasha Tracy (07:10):
So if I needed time, I, you know, an afternoon off or something, I could take it. But the the minuses unfortunately were, we were expected to do kind of outrageous things. I do remember a couple of times where I had to work all night which is not something I would ever do now considering my bipolar disorder, but at the time I was younger and things were different and that was expected of me. So I just did it now, something like working for 24 hours at a time is really going to impact something like a circadian rhythm disorder, which of course is what bipolar disorder is. So doing something like that is incredibly negative on something like a mental illness, but it is something that I did. And then as I moved into larger companies basically what I found was the stress of changing companies was very hard on me and my mental illness.
Natasha Tracy (08:09):
So when I moved to the next company, basically within six months, I landed in the hospital for suicidal ideation. And it wasn’t because of anything bad that had happened. It was literally just that I had changed jobs and gotten into a new workplace. That’s all, it was the workplace. Wasn’t bad. The people weren’t bad. The job wasn’t bad, nothing about that was negative. It was actually all pretty positive stuff, but bipolar disorder doesn’t like change and mental illness doesn’t like change. And so even though that change was positive, it still resulted in a very severe mood episode for me. And it did result in me landing in the hospital. Of course I did manage to get out of the hospital and continue that job. Luckily for me it was not the kind of workplace that judged me for having to spend time in the hospital.
Natasha Tracy (09:03):
Not that I told them why I was there, but it’s not that it, I was lucky enough that they, they kept me on and, and it was okay. And then I got to a third job, which was in the major tech company and I had to actually change countries for that job. I’m actually from Canada and I had to move to Seattle to work for this particular tech company. And by this time I was like 28. And basically, even though I saw it coming, and even though I knew it was likely to occur, and even though I tried everything I knew to avoid it, I still ended up being in a massive suicidal depression within the first nine months of joining the company. Now, I was very lucky because this was a major tech company. There were good benefits. So I actually could take time off for disability short term time off for disability.
Natasha Tracy (10:01):
And while I was taking that time off, I actually got the surgery for VA nerve stimulation and actually that surgery and that implant didn’t help me unfortunately. But what it did do is it gave me time away from the office and away from the stressors such that I could calm myself down my nervous system, down my illness down and get to the point where I could get back to work. Once I was back at work, I mean, that was what I really wanted to do. And that was where I really wanted to be. And I think that’s something that people don’t understand is like, just because I have this bad reaction to work doesn’t mean that I didn’t wanna be there. I actually did wanna be there the bad reaction to work. Wasn’t me. It was my illness. And so when I got back, I found it very challenging.
Natasha Tracy (10:51):
The people there were wickedly hard, the job was wickedly difficult. And I swear to you, some of them would literally stab you in the back. If they thought it would give them a better review, come September it was fairly brutal. So there were a lot of challenges with working there and my stress level was really high. So basically I think I spent a lot of time at that company in a depression, but not necessarily as severe as necessary to take time off now because I was working full time. I had to find ways to deal with my mental illness at work, regardless as to what was happening around me. And as I continued to work there, I do admit my mental health did get worse over time. So in the end, I did find myself doing things like closing the door to my office and sleeping on the floor for a half an hour or something like that in the afternoons, because I literally couldn’t keep going in the afternoons.
Natasha Tracy (11:54):
I would just sort of like die and, and need this like refresh time. And so even though I had to lie on a, basically a concrete floor and pretend that I wasn’t there with my door closed, that was much better for me than just trying to continue forward. I also had to do things like, you know, trust in certain people to tell them what was going on with me. I had to leave work for things like psychiatry appointments. And so someone had to know, but I have to leave work at this amount of time today, so I can go to an appointment. And of course those appointments are regular. So at some point someone’s gonna ask, why do you have so many regular appointments? So even if you don’t tell them why you’re going, people do start to wonder. So it’s important to actually say to somebody there, and it might be your manager.
Natasha Tracy (12:44):
In my case, it wasn’t, it was actually the lead of the project. But to basically say, I have to go to these appointments. And they’re very important. I learned that that was really critical. And one of the other things I did that was good for my mental health when I was at that job actually was volunteering. So again, I was lucky that this particular company had a very big volunteering program and they encouraged their employees to volunteer. So once a week, I actually volunteered to read books to school kids after school while they were waiting for their parents. So it was kids who couldn’t get the ride home immediately after school. And so that volunteering actually, I think helped me decompress from the week at work but also allowed me to put my brain in a different space and in a space where I could focus on other people and actually helping other people, rather than just focusing on my own internal stuff, which was plentiful , but was something that I needed a break from from time to time.
Natasha Tracy (13:48):
So I think that was really important. I also learned at that particular place that it wasn’t all great. When it came to mental illness in the workplace, I knew of someone else who had bipolar disorder at the workplace and word got out about a HYM or at least people assumed that he had bipolar disorder because of something that had happened and had nothing to do with me, but something had happened. And then employees started to assume that about him. And then eventually he did go to his manager and tell his manager that he had bipolar disorder. He filled in the paperwork for having a disability, all that kind of stuff like you’re supposed to do, but unfortunately it just didn’t work out for him. He was a senior person at the company. And what he said was, as soon as people started assuming he had this illness, and as soon as his manager found out, he was never put on a good team.
Natasha Tracy (14:43):
Again, people didn’t trust him with projects and they basically overlooked him for everything and he couldn’t get promotions. He couldn’t change teams, all that kind of stuff. And he eventually had to leave the company in order to further his career. And it was extremely sad to see that happen to someone. But I wanna be clear that that really does happen in workplaces. People really do have really bad experiences because of their mental illness in the workplace. And people do get fired because of it. We heard from Gabe Howard a couple of weeks ago, he got fired eventually because he had bipolar disorder and that sort of stuff really does happen. So people have to be really careful about mental illness in the workplace about who they tell. I’m gonna talk about anxiety and depression in the workplace in just a minute here. And those are a little bit more accepted, but certainly no matter what, it’s a delicate subject.
Natasha Tracy (15:44):
You are tuned in to Snap Out of It! The Mental Illness in the Workplace Podcast and today, I’m talking about my own experience and mental illness facts about mental illness in the workplace. And don’t forget if you have a question, please pop it into the comment box and I will try to answer it.
Natasha Tracy (16:05):
And I think that , and I think that the other thing that I learned from working with mental illness is that it is possible, but it is extremely difficult when I got laid off in 2009, that was a huge blow to me. I had moved to this other country for that job. I didn’t know anyone. I changed my entire life for this job. And after three years being laid off was basically my personal nightmare. And that of course did do terrible things to my mental health. Admittedly, it would’ve done terrible things to anyone’s mental health, but because I had a compromised mental health already, it was even worse. And so for me I ended up going through electroconvulsive therapy at that time because I was so incredibly depressed and there were basically no other treatment options available for me at that time. It was something that I ended up looking into because I was so extremely desperate after being laid off.
Natasha Tracy (17:10):
And I found myself at that point, not only without a job and without an ability to get a job, but I wasn’t sure that I could go back into the workforce. Again, I had been in it successfully. unfortunately laid off as something that happens to people and it’s no one’s fault, but it happens. And you know, so when I did start as a writer and being able to make my own schedule work at home, all that kind of stuff, those were big benefits to me. And now at this point in my life, I know that I couldn’t be a full-time employee anymore. It was a few years ago that someone offered me a full-time job. And I just realized that there was no way I could go into an office 40 hours a week and do the things that I used to do. I am just too sick. I’m too disabled. Of course not everyone with mental illness is going to be in this position. Many people work with mental illness and are just fine. But for me with this particular serious mental illness, I am not fine. And it’s very difficult.
Natasha Tracy (18:24):
Now I do wanna talk a little bit about the facts and statistics around mental illness in the workplace specifically, I’m going to talk about depression and anxiety. So I’ve said many times now there is an ethical imperative to care for people with mental illness in the workplace. After all, if 20% of people have a mental illness, it is completely unacceptable to disregard one in five people. But that’s not the only reason that companies should care companies should care because it affects the bottom line. I’m going to talk about how anxiety and depression in the workplace do just that.
Natasha Tracy (19:04):
So, first of all, I’m going to talk about anxiety disorders. Now anxiety disorders are actually the most common kind of mental illness inside the workplace and out. So anxiety disorders are more than just normal worry or fear. Normal worry and fear is, as the word says normal, everybody does it. And it’s not a mental illness, but anxiety disorders take that to the point where it can be crippling extreme and persistent. Typical symptoms include complaints like insomnia, sweating, trembling, stomach upset, difficulty speaking, intense panic, or fear and constant unwanted thoughts related to that anxiety, anxiety disorder symptoms also significantly interfere with a person’s ability to function optimally or otherwise cause them market distress. So the fact that they actually change the way a person functions and makes them unable to function properly or causes them distress is part of what makes it an illness. So if you have anxiety and it’s causing no issue in your life, that’s not a mental illness. It’s only once it starts harming you and your lifestyle that it becomes a problem.
Natasha Tracy (20:16):
So anxiety disorders in the United States affect about 18% of American adults. And as many of, as many as 33% of people at any point in their lifetime will have an anxiety disorder and keep in mind that anxiety disorders commonly co-occur with other illnesses. So in other words, they’re comorbid, they occur together. So commonly anxiety occurs alongside depression. Anxiety disorders are associated with a poorer quality of life compared to not having anxiety, including higher rates of divorce and unemployment. And obviously that’s something I would like to see changed. Anxiety disorders include things like phobias, social anxiety, disorder, panic attacks, and panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder myself. I actually suffer from generalized anxiety disorder. And I can tell you, it’s a real thing. People think those with anxiety are faking it, or it’s no big deal or whatever. It’s a big deal and they are not faking it. Anxiety disorders are disorders and illnesses just like any other illness when it comes to illnesses like PTSD. So post-traumatic stress disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder. They are related to anxiety disorders, but they are no longer considered anxiety disorders in and of themself. Now anxiety disorders are associated with poor job productivity, short and long term work disability. However, it is my belief that it doesn’t have to be that way, this result right now, because we’re not dealing with it properly in a 4.1 billion indirect workplace cost. So 4.1 billion, that’s a big number. Anxiety disorders lead to an average of 4.6 lost work days per month. So 4.6 days, that’s almost a week per month that people take off with anxiety disorders when they are left. Untreated
Natasha Tracy (22:19):
Workers with anxiety disorders have a more than 1.5 times risk of being absent for at least two weeks than those without anxiety and more than double the risk of having poor work performance. 30% of working adults with an anxiety disorder reported reduced work productivity over the previous four weeks, while a mere 0.5% of adults without a mental illness reported the same thing. The world health organization recently reported that it estimated 12 billion working days will be lost to untreated depression and anxiety by the year 2030 resulting in a global cost of 925 billion billion with a B that is a very big number. However, there is good news for every $1 invested in treating depression and anxiety. There is a $4 return to the economy. I’m going to say that again for every $1 invested, you get back $4 into the economy. Does it make sense that we are not handling depression and anxiety more effectively when it actually makes the economy money? Of course, it doesn’t many people with mental illnesses successfully maintaining a job is an essential part of their recovery and wellbeing. In other words, as I said earlier, people with anxiety disorders, just like people with other illnesses want to be at work and it’s actually part of their own wellbeing. It’s not that they don’t wanna be there or that they’re trying to get out of work.
Natasha Tracy (23:55):
So employers can do things like educate employees and managers about mental health disorders. They can promote the use of employee assistance programs and other health related programs. They can give employees more control over the assignments and schedules and ensure a collegial supportive environment. And this can help people with anxiety, do their job better. Not every job is gonna be able to do that where possible it’s helpful. There are accommodations that an employer might give to an employee. So things like giving them that control ensuring. Oh, so those are the accommodations that employers might do. People with anxiety often struggle with organization planning and time management and might need extra coaching or skill building in these areas that doesn’t make them bad employees. It just means they have areas to improve.
Natasha Tracy (24:51):
And in people with anxiety may have lots of absences. Supervisors should work with employees on an individual basis to handle excessive absences, stay in regular contact with absent employees and work collaborative, to develop a return to work plan that includes specific dates and accommodations to make the job setting as comfortable, but productive as possible. Remind all employees of the availability of resources for staying healthy and productive, which hopefully every employer is providing. To some extent finally maintain an empathetic and understanding attitude towards working with individuals with anxiety. It’s really important that the person with anxiety or any mental illness feel like they can come to their manager or someone else in the company and actually talk to them. And the only way that can happen is if you show empathy to your employees. So I am talking today about mental illness in the workplace. I talked about anxiety and next up, I am gonna talk about depression. If you have a question for me, please pop it in the comment box and I’ll make sure that I answer it today.
Natasha Tracy (26:03):
So depression affects 16 million Americans or almost 7% of the population. Depression includes things like feeling sad, a loss of interest in a pleasurable activities that were previously enjoyed difficulty concentrating and making decisions changes in appetite, overeating, or not eating enough trouble, sleeping or sleeping too much fatigue, restless activities, or slowed movements and speech feelings of worthlessness or guilt, thoughts of suicide or self harm. And it’s really important to realize that while those can be very severe, depression can actually anyone, even a person who appears to live with relatively ideal circumstances. So even if you look at an employee, let’s say they’re high up in your organization. Let’s say they make a lot of money. Let’s say they’re married and have, you know, 2.5 kids, a picket fence and a dog. It doesn’t mean that a mental illness can’t come and visit them. A mental illness is not about your circumstances, and it’s not about anything wrong with the individual.
Natasha Tracy (27:11):
It’s about, you know, something in your brain twigs, and you end up with a mental illness. It’s not the employee’s fault. Depression costs employers and estimated 44 billion each year in lost productivity, 44 billion. Does your company wanna be part of that? About half of the employees with depression are actually untreated. And that’s one of the reasons why it costs so much and depression of course contributes to presenteeism and absenteeism. Now presenteeism is when the person actually goes to work because they feel that they have to be there, but they are not productive. That’s presenteeism. And of course, absenteeism is when they don’t make it into work at all. Now it’s difficult to measure the costs of presenteeism, but it’s absolutely a real costs that workplace should take into account.
Natasha Tracy (28:06):
Depression can also impair things like focus, decision making, time management, the completion of physical tasks, social interactions, and communication. And of course, those things tend to be things that good employees actually need. So if your employee has trouble with social interactions and communicating, it’s not, it may not be that they are just socially awkward. It may be that they’re actually experiencing an illness and they are, those are symptoms of their illness. So it’s important to look into that as a possibility. In other words, it’s important to take a holistic view of the employee and not just think there’s something wrong with them.
Natasha Tracy (28:48):
There is good news, 40 to 60% reduction in absenteeism and presenteeism with treatment. So as I said about half of people are not getting that treatment. And that’s why we’re seeing these huge numbers. But if you can reduce that absenteeism and presenteeism by 40 to 60% by encouraging your employees to get treatment, then it makes absolute sense that you would do that. And again, I just wanna say it one more time. $1 of investment in treatment for depression and anxiety leads to a return of $4 in better health and work performance. That investment is a no brainer.
Natasha Tracy (29:30):
So employers can educate employees about mental health conditions consider an initiative that brings a discussion about depression out into the open and encourages employees to seek help when needed employers can also include depression screening in health risk, appraisals, Sora, and in employee assistant programs. Employers should also confirm, and this one’s a bit technical, but employers should also confirm that their health plans are using a validated screening tool tool, like the nine item, patient health questionnaire. So the PHQ nine. So you wanna make sure that the tool that they’re using to measure whether an employee has depression is validated and make sense. Employers should also inform their health plans, that they want primary care clinicians to conduct routine depression screenings, and to offer collaborative care. This research based model of healthcare has more than 80 studies showing its effectiveness in improving treatment outcomes. Collaborative care is provided in the primary care setting with a care manager, a primary care provider and a specialty mental health provider.
Natasha Tracy (30:38):
Finally, employers can promote the use of employee assistance programs and health programs. The bottom line about anxiety and depression and in the workplace is this early intervention is key. You wanna handle these problems while they’re small and not wait until they’re huge. That’s why it’s so critical that you actually encourage your employees to get help and have it out in the open. The more employers raise the visibility of mental health. The more it will be normalized and increasing the likelihood that employees will seek care when needed when depression and anxiety are effectively addressed in the workplace. It promotes lower total medical costs increases productivity, lowers, absenteeism, and decreases disability costs. The bottom line is investing in a mentally healthy workforce is good for business.
Natasha Tracy (31:34):
And just a quick note here, the facts cited here are provided by the American Psychiatric Association Center for Workplace Mental Health and their site can be found at workplacementalhealth.org.
Natasha Tracy (31:50):
Now I do have a question that Kim asked me earlier and she asked, how do people deal with complete brain crash at work? I mean, a brain that just stops working and coffee breaks, walks, et cetera, just don’t help.
Natasha Tracy (32:08):
Kim, that’s a really tough question. So what if you’re talking about something has happened, let’s say it’s anxiety for you if something has happened and it’s brought about an absolute anxiety attack for you and you can no longer function, no matter what you do, you are in that anxiety attack and functioning is impossible for you. I think the only thing to do at that point is literally walk home, go home maybe not walk home.
Natasha Tracy (32:37):
You can drive home is to go home. I actually don’t think there’s anything that you can do at work. That’s going to solve that problem for you. The only thing that might make a difference is if you have someone that you can talk to and be, and be a sounding board for you. So if you have someone at work, who’s a very good friend, someone at work who you trust, dealing with those kind of personal issues, talking to that person and actually bringing that difficulty that you’re having out into the open could make it possible for you to stay at work that day. Many people don’t have this however, and going home, maybe the only option, if you have to go home in the middle of a Workday, of course, you may need to tell your manager, but you do not need to tell your manager why you are going home at that moment. You can simply say, I’m not feeling well, I’m sick. That’s all you have to say because you are not feeling well and you are sick. Mental illnesses are real illnesses. So saying that you’re sick in going home is both truthful and accurate and appropriate. So that’s what I would say.
Natasha Tracy (33:46):
So another question here, do you have any theories based upon your own experience or backed by evidence as to why mental illness is still so stigmatized in the workplace? Interesting. I think that mental illness tends to be stigmatized because people don’t want to get it. I guess it’s that simple. So here’s the thing. If I say to you that mental illness can happen to anyone, then that means there’s nothing you can do to stop it from being you. If however, you think that mental illness is the person’s fault. If you think that the person has some kind of flaw, if you think that they have a lack of character, et cetera, then you think it can’t possibly be me. I don’t have a character flaw. I don’t have anything wrong with me. I’m never going to be ill. So when you have that attitude, it’s protective, you’re protecting yourself from the idea that you could ever have a mental illness. Fine. The problem is that you’re also degrading the people who actually do have a mental illness. I E there’s a stigma there against the people with mental illness. And it’s something that people do for protection. It’s not, I don’t think it’s ne it’s nefarious. I think people are just protecting their own emotional wellbeing. And that’s why there’s stigma. And you see it a lot in the workplace because in the workplace you wanna appear as strong and capable as possible. And people view those with mental illness as not strong and not capable. And nobody wants to be seen that way. Now it is not the case that people with mental illness aren’t strong or capable. We are strong. We live with illness and we are capable. We do it every day. However that doesn’t stop other people from not seeing that in us.
Natasha Tracy (35:41):
Is there anything other employees do practically to support their coworkers who struggle with mental illness? That’s a great question. So if you do know someone who has a mental illness and you want to support them, amazing, good for you. That is an amazing thing to do. Thank you for doing that. I think that the things you wanna do are things like keeping your door open to conversation. So you can say to someone, if you ever need to talk about anything, I’m absolutely here for you. That’s a great, that’s a gift you’re giving to someone. When you say that to someone, might they take you up on it? Maybe, maybe not, but leaving your door open is incredibly important. Stopping other conversations, that’s negative around mental illness is also important. So if you hear someone making disparaging comments about, you know someone who has a mental illness in the break room, something like that, then yeah, you absolutely can step in and say, that’s not appropriate.
Natasha Tracy (36:43):
That’s an illness. We don’t make fun of people with cancer. And we don’t make fun of people with mental illness either. That’s important. And then the other thing you can do is you can actually, if you’re really a go-getter and I know some people are, you can start a group for people with mental illness or supporters in a company. So there’s actually a safe place for people to go to talk about mental wellness, to talk about their strategies, to talk about their coping skills. That’s an amazing thing to do. Actually on the first episode of this podcast, I interviewed a woman who did just that at Johnson and Johnson and the program has, blossomed. So thousands of people actually now do that around the world, in that company. So it is a possible thing to do. I would not say it’s easy, but if you really wanna support people, it’s something you could think about.
Natasha Tracy (37:36):
I think we’re gonna close it there in terms of questions. Join me at the same time next week, that’s at 2:00 PM Eastern for a conversation with Jason Hamburg, the President of Neuroscience at Takeda Canada. He is going to tell us what it’s like to work when you have attention-deficit,/hyperactivity disorder, and binge eating disorder, both before and after diagnosis. Drop by this podcast’s website at snapoutofitpodcast.com for more information.
Natasha Tracy (38:07):
Snap Out of It! Recordings are available on your favorite podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you do check us out there, we would love a review.
Natasha Tracy (38:17):
And if you’d like to be a guest on Snap, Out of It!, check out the website and fill out the guest application form. Again, that’s at snapoutofitpodcast.com.
Natasha Tracy (38:27):
My name is Natasha Tracy. I hope you have a great week with great mental health.
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