Testimonials
Case study from an employer taking mental health seriously
“BT launched its Positive Mentality health promotion campaign in October 2006. It was a major programme, lasting 16 weeks [drawn up in conjunction with the support of mental health charities the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and Mind], to tackle problems such as anxiety, depression and stress in its workforce. We worked with unions to create the Work Fit – Positive Mentality campaign that provided practical guidance to its 108,000 employees across the globe on how to improve their mental health at work and at home.
BT hoped that by encouraging staff to adopt small changes in lifestyle and use proven techniques for increasing their resilience they would cope better with the pressures of modern living and work more creatively and productively.
We have seen a 30% reduction in mental health sickness absence since we started tackling these issues a few years ago. That represents the difference between having 650-700 people a day off with stress, depression, and anxiety to our current level of 550-600. We have seen that stress claims have been dramatically reduced, our medical retirement rate for mental illness is down by 80%. Also, workers who are off long-term with mental health issues return to their own job at BT.
The benefits to the bottom line of the business are easy to appreciate in terms of productivity and reduced absenteeism, but we also recognise that a happier, healthier workforce will be a more productive one generally. As a business, BT believes that if you invest in a person and help them to maintain their mental wellbeing, perhaps in times of difficulty, that person will repay you with loyalty”.
Paul Lichfield Head of Health and Safety at BT, the Guardian 14 November 2007
We too have dreams.
We too have dreams. Not the dreams of normal people, but simple dreams. Dreams of a place where we are seen not as ill, but as damaged and healing fast. Dreams of a place where we are seen as who we are, not labelled by a doctor as different and separate from you.
Dreams of a place where we are accepted for the contribution we can make, for the wisdom we learnt from our journey. Our journey has not been ordinary. We have seen things that you cannot even dream about. For us, heaven and hell did open and the way home has not been easy.
We too have dreams, of being welcomed back, of making our contribution, of learning from our experience. We cannot do this without you. We no longer have your strength and stamina. Much has changed whilst we have been away. We took a few hits. We did not go down with the first blow, nor with the second, or even the third.
Our chance has come to heal. We dream that you will help us, that you will offer out your hand and help us stand up straight again. Proud of what we have done, wiser for where we have been and stronger for knowing who we are.
We too have dreams. Our minds have changed, and changed again. Yet though that experience makes us different it doesn’t make separate us from you. It brings us closer to you, because we see what runs beneath your surface.
Liz Miller, London. Trustee
Letters to the press about Stand to Reason
Selection of letters to Society Guardian, November 21 2007 (in response to Mary O’Hara’s cover article in Society Guardian, November 14 2007) link
You quote high-flyers, who are indeed praiseworthy for “coming out”. I would like to see more pressure on human resources departments in big firms to locate the source of mental health stress on people lower down the pecking order, which is often from persecution and unreasonable behaviour by immediate managers and colleagues. They should institute training focused on how counterproductive this is, and how they should run their professional relationships. As a counsellor/therapist, I see the damage that is done. Employees then go off sick, and if they are lucky the firm’s health insurance provision has to pick up the pieces.
Anita Soley, by email
Thank you so much for publishing this article: it certainly raised many of the issues I have faced in my own career. After a suicide attempt in October 2004 I was finally diagnosed with a bipolar affective disorder with rapid cycling in December 2004. Unfortunately it did not save me from losing my job and being paid off from my senior management position within the higher education sector. I am a bright, talented graduate with a degree from a leading university. I have a wealth of experience to offer an employer but I have found it difficult to find work since. It is now nearly 3 years since I was forced to leave my last job. Something needs to be done to change employers’ attitudes to mental illness both for existing employees and when recruiting new ones and I hope that Stand to Reason can contribute to this.
Name and address supplied
I have great sympathy for people with mental illness and agree that we should help them as much as we can. But we must realise that some of them can cause immense problems for employers. A few years ago a big corporation offered to finance a new research project in the department of which I was head and I gladly accepted. Then they suggested that they could send one of their senior staff to help with the research and again I agreed. But it was a disaster. I soon learnt that they wanted to send him because they found it impossible to work with him. Very soon he quarrelled with the staff of the department and even demanded that one of the researchers should be made his personal assistant/secretary. After a few months he left, leaving the department with a research project that it could not finance and the corporation withdrew its financial support. There was more to come. Some time later he went to another organisation to assist with another huge research project; again he left suddenly, leaving the department saddled with the whole complex and expensive project.
Name and address supplied
I am totally supportive of the work being done by Stand to Reason. The bottom line is that more often than not mental health is seen as a soft option illness unless, of course, you have been the victim of it. The reality is that the off-shoots of mental illness affects the person living with it and the people they come into contact with. The hardest thing in my experience is that with mental health there is a real effort to keep the illness from affecting other people and one keeps so much inside. Therefore when it all comes tumbling out, which invariably it will, people struggle to associate the illness with the person they thought was before them, hence the unreality of being able to truly express this as an illness. Thank you standing up and covering this subject.
Name and address supplied
This kind of couragous coming out does more for mental health than any psychiatrist can hope to achieve during the whole of a working life. Congratulations, Mr Naess. I have lost count of the number of times I have debated whether a successful career, or any career at all, was feasible for my mentally ill patients. Now, referring to you and your charity will make that argument easier.
Dr Hansen Lars
Reading about Stand to Reason in this morning’s Society section gave me great hope. As a professional who has had bouts of depression in my career, I have chosen to hide most of the details from my employers for reasons clearly articulated in the article. However, when people get to know me and then find out my history with depression, they are intrigued. They want to know about what it’s like, what I feel and how I cope. I gladly answer these personal questions in the hope of making it more understandable. I have been told on occasions “but you’re so normal” – a sure sign that the deep roots of the stigma still there.
There are many capable, successful people who struggle with the permanent condition of a mental illness. At times, we successfully hold the black dog at bay but other times we fail and it impacts on us and all of those around us. But we are still human beings and should be treated as such. In one workplace, while on medication for depression, my boss treated me with impatience and disdain. Fully aware of my situation, he threatened to put me on the redundancy list that everyone knew existed. I was clearly not coping with the stress at work, the problems in my personal life, the huge uncertainty of work with impending redundancies. His cruel and bombastic approach lead to me to resign and take nine months out of the work place. That was four years ago and I now hold down a great job as an IT industry analyst. I don’t doubt the black dog will come to haunt me again but I do hope that this time around my employer will be better able to cope. I believe Stand to Reason could be a large influencer in changing attitudes in the corporate world.
Name and address supplied
Mary O’Hara’s article gave an estimated 80million workdays lost due to the most common mental health problems (stress, depression, anxiety): a staggering number. The founding of Stand to Reason, which takes a proactive and political approach to addressing the problem, is encouraging. It does not surprise me that employers underestimate the number of employees with a mental health problem. Overcoming stigma takes patient work and sustained efforts to give people the confidence to combat their own and others’ attitudes. There are understandable reasons why sufferers will not disclose. I agree that the need to educate employers is key.
Addressing the differential power dynamics between employees who fear stigma or redundancy when they do not have their own managerial weight behind them in their institution would be an important step. Employees also need to be convinced that their illnesses merit serious support. I look back and wonder whether the stress of some of my work roles could have been managed more productively, if I had openly negotiated “reasonable adjustments” with my employers. Having just resigned from a role, I feel a sense of loss and sadness over this. Unfortunately, one of the symptoms of depression can be self-blame. Let’s work to make people believe that it is not a gamble to allow themselves to be open about mental ill health, and to realise they are not alone.
Tania Barnett, by email
It is admirable that the people you feature are working well while having a mental health problem. However I don’t think this is the last taboo, all these people had a job that they went back to after their problems, and none of them have schizophrenia. When someone coming back into the workforce can write “schizophrenia” as a disability on an application form and still be seriously considered for a job, on their merits, we will be near to conquering the last taboo.
Janey Antoniou, Edgware, London
I have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which first started when I was nine years old. I would love to be “out” at work, but I work as a researcher on a temporary contract and I cannot afford to give employers the slightest excuse not to employ me, given that competition for jobs is so fierce. Not even my family know; an attempt to tell my mother about it when it started was met with the response “don’t ever tell anyone about it, you’ll get locked up”. It was never spoken of again. I learned both to live with it, and to hide it as much as possible. What interests me is that, when one has learned to live with such a condition, it can even be turned to one’s advantage: compulsive data checking adds to my accuracy as a researcher. OCD hasn’t stopped me having a happy marriage, or hindered me from achieving a degree, masters and PhD. Heavy workloads and deadlines don’t stress me out, but keeping the OCD secret and having to pass as “normal” definitely does.
Name and address supplied