The Cost of Staying Silent and the Cost of Speaking Up.
Personal Perspective: We still don't talk easily about mental illness.
Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

My new boss calls me periodically to let me know about her struggles to find her optimal dose of Zoloft. I would never disclose to her that I take two antidepressants as well as a second-generation antipsychotic. Why? Because there is still a stigma against mental illness in the workplace — especially severe mental illness. It’s one thing to find out your new employee suffered from depression, yet another thing to discover she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Kaiser Permanente states that untreated depression costs $9,450 per employee per year in absenteeism and lost productivity. Why, especially within the field of mental health, is it not okay to be dealing with a mental illness? In my very first position out of college, before I became a social worker, I was working at a packaged goods company when I was diagnosed with anorexia. After two psychiatric hospitalizations a year apart I was let go. (This was prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed in 1990.)

In my first role as a social worker after five years of being at this clinic, I was hospitalized for depression. When I returned I’d been demoted. Humiliated, I quit. That experience sent me reeling and I plummeted into a severe depressive episode that lasted 18 months.

Why don’t we talk about mental illness as easily as we talk about asthma or a broken wrist? You don’t get demoted or repurposed for being hospitalized for an asthma attack or needing surgery for a fractured wrist. According to Kaiser Permanente, 62% of missed workdays can be attributed to mental health conditions. This is the cost of silence. This is the cost of stigma.

After I recovered from that depressive episode in 2008, I found a position at an outpatient clinic in Queens, NY. I was doing well there until my father passed away in 2013. We didn’t have a good relationship and when he died I lost the chance to hear him tell me I was good enough, words I longed to hear all my life. At the beginning of 2014 I attempted suicide. When I was discharged from the medical and psychiatric hospitals, the director of the clinic forced me to step down to part-time. The clients on my caseload had been transferred to other clinicians. This was a mental health clinic penalizing one of its employees for suffering from a mental illness.

I eventually was reinstated full-time, but never was permitted to see patients again. Instead, I was tasked with administrative work. I immediately began looking for a new job and found one by the end of that year.

After those experiences, I swore to myself that as long as I could help it, I’d never take a chance and disclose my history of mental illness in the workplace again. When I started my new position, my mental health had improved significantly and I was more stable. I haven’t needed to be psychiatrically hospitalized since then, so I haven’t had any extended absences to explain.

I let my writing speak for me, fighting the stigma of mental illness with the power of the written word. I also write to let others know they’re not alone on their journey and that recovery is possible. I’m aware that all someone has to do is Google me and they will find my writing and my history. That’s fine. Silence comes in many forms. So does speaking up.

Thanks for reading.