Released: August 22, 2006

Employers address mental illness in workplace

Source: By Stephanie Armour, USA Today

At first, it seemed as if little things were going wrong. Bonnie Harris forgot about sales appointments; she couldn’t recall colleagues’ names. But as her job in sales became more stressful, Harris developed intense mood swings and moments of terror. She saw psychiatrists, who prescribed various medications, but the drugs only made things worse, she says. At one point, she tried to throw herself out of a window.

It wasn’t until Harris, an earlier victim of violent crime, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that she began to recover with the help of therapy and meditation. But through her entire 1991 episode, she kept working, trying to camouflage what was going on.

“I went to work every day. I was a top salesperson, working 60-hour weeks,” says Harris, 44. “Co-workers knew I was moody, but no one knew how bad it was. You don’t tell people at work that you have this mental illness. It’s so shameful.”

Today, Harris runs her own firm, Wax Marketing, in St. Paul and knows how to manage PTSD when symptoms creep up. Despite its stigma, a growing number of employers and employees are addressing a topic that has long been taboo: mental illness in the workplace. Employees’ emotional health, a topic that once seemed incongruous with the survival-of-the-fittest corporate arena, is getting attention as a real bottom-line issue. Employers are beefing up mental health services as new research shows the staggering cost of mood disorders — depression, anxiety and panic disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder — can have on businesses.

For example:

•High costs. Untreated mental illness costs the USA $105 billion in lost productivity each year, with U.S. employers footing up to $44 billion of the bill, according to the National Mental Health Association, an Alexandria, Va.-based non-profit.

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