To be unaware of this doesn't make you an 8sshole, I don't think, just hopelessly out of step. Part of the point of publicizing these struggles is to change your mind.

While I obviously lean much more strongly toward your interpretation of the situation than I do HW's, the fact, I think, remains that if he's "just hopelessly out of step," so is a huge portion -- very possibly a majority -- of the rest of the populace. Which calls into question the entire concept of being "out of step."

I hope I'm wrong, though.

Ron -- That sounds great.

Well, nightmarish.

But fun!

Adding it to my want list even as I type.

Thanks!

Fair comment. I live in San Francisco, so my idea of "in step" is likely a bit queer.

I understand and share your frustration with the complicated workplace administration issues that arise around mental health concerns, but I feel that your understanding of the difficulties of dealing with the problems of depression and social anxiety is archaic.

For some people, the barriers to getting the "right" help (if such a thing should even exist for them) are insurmountable. I promise.

I think the issue is some of us don't believe people have the right to hold a job they no longer can perform, even if that's not their fault. If physical or mental illness prevents you from doing your job, that's what disability insurance is for.

LTD typically covers 2 years for same-job disability, and indefinite if you can't perform any job. So, if you're a ditch digger and you hurt your back, or an bond trader who can no longer cope with the stress, you get two years to find another trade. If you're completely disabled, you have an income. That seems fair to me.

If you're objective is to do it quickly that's probably true but firing someone properly is easy enough and does not need to take a long time at all. As long as you properly document what the employee is doing and communicate appropriately the day comes pretty quickly.

That's not what I've seen. It always seems to take at least 6 months.

Yeah, that matches up with my experience. Often longer if the problem employee is a member of a protected class, and most of them are nowadays.

Some of the blame needs to go to poor management though; many managers do a poor job of documenting performance issues, and sometimes don't do the job at all. If you've been suffering with an incompetent employee for years, but never noted their issues in performance reviews, set up improvement plans, or otherwise documented their ineptitude, I don't have a ton of sympathy for you.

morton

i am old but not daft.

first, i don't see the purpose beyind blending various statements together other than to try and confuse me or to tag me to statements not made. it's an old ploy on bbtf and i am not buying. state your point clearly or don't bother

as for employees having barriers to help that is possible but unlikely since a good many companies (large and small) have some form of employee assistance hotline and of course there are health plans. and lest we forget people have friends and families as support networks to possibly guide them to a health professional

and note i am speaking of folks who are working, not the unemployed or semi-employed where options are reduced.

try again. i grade the above post--------------fail

Well, Morton, as he noted, is in San Francisco. You're in Wisconsin, HW. Me? Alabama.

Three different worlds (which doesn't change at all when I note yet again that most of the experiences I've alluded to occurred in Arkansas).

If you're objective is to do it quickly that's probably true but firing someone properly is easy enough and does not need to take a long time at all. As long as you properly document what the employee is doing and communicate appropriately the day comes pretty quickly.

That's not what I've seen. It always seems to take at least 6 months.

That's ridiculous. That's an HR department being overly sensitive to potential pitfalls. Obviously you don't want to just boot people out the door with regularity but when you've reached that point where someone has to go there is no reason at all for it to take six months. Frankly, if you've created an action plan for someone and they've survived that long either the action plan is flawed or they have corrected the behavior.

The problem is often the will to let people go. It sucks, no doubt about it. At the risk of being unfeeling you need to be willing to let people go to run a successful business.

MW: I too am old, but must admit to being pretty darned daft. I was not trying to confuse, sorry.

I have nothing to say regarding the workplace aspect of this discussion.

My point is twofold: the language you use unfairly characterizes the maladies under discussion and those who suffer from them, and that characterization does harm.

At the risk of being unfeeling you need to be willing to let people go to run a successful business.

Or, as indicated previously, you can opt instead to keep promoting them.

(I won't truly believe that newspapers are as bad off as they keep whining they are until they start lopping off unsightly, useless flab instead of muscle & bone. I can't speak for anywhere else, but at least in Little Rock & Montgomery, it hasn't really begun happening yet.)

morton

post 9 onward was focused on how this relates to the workplace

and this fussiness over language baffles me. i acknowledge the problem is real (i have it myself). i believe people should be able to get the help they need. what the h8ll else is needed?

what the h8ll else is needed?

Money.

Lots of it.

Sent to gef the talking mongoose for proper administration & distribution.

Small bills or large ... doesn't matter.

(No checks, please. My bank persists in confusing me with someone with an entirely different name.)

Thanks in advance!

HW: You and I agree: the problem is real, and people should be able to get the help they need. That I am fussy about language is also fair comment!

gef

let me guess, the human fund

look, if you need a ramp to get to work i have no issue becuase you are getting to work. and if you need a special reader on your computer because your eyes are shot that's ok too because again, you are working

but i need to keep your spot because you need to sit home because your head is elsewhere? got a developer who has missed over a month in 2012 because of this stuff and allegedly we cannot do anything about it.

The way you're phrasing "this stuff" sends the message that you don't really understand what depression is really like. Most people think they understand depression because they experience sadness, but depression isn't sadness. Sadness is the tip of the iceberg, and the part that the world sees.

I've had (fortunately rare, but still frightening) incidents where I was literally unable to move my limbs from depression. I've alternated weeks where I couldn't seem to get to sleep or stay asleep for longer than a couple of hours at a time with weeks where I slept twelve hours a day. There's also sometimes physical pain: usually just a dull ache, but sometimes splitting headaches or intense stomach issues. Of course, I've hit the point where I use those symptoms when I call in because depression has a stigma associated with it.

Depression is also a serious obstacle to its own treatment. The disease fills you with hopelessness that makes it hard to expend energy to fix it, and often history shows that fixes are only temporary. I've tried at least fifteen different anti-depressants and none have lasted longer than six months or so; most do nothing at all. Plus it takes about a month to even know if medication is working at all. So you endure a month of side-effects to find out if the medicine even does anything, and it's very hard to read. Maybe you go up a dose because you think you feel something, but it might just be a relatively good month (maybe that's what motivated you to try a different medication in the first place), and then that's another two months spent on a useless med. Imagine if you had a broken leg and you spent the last fifteen years trying all sorts of different casts, but it couldn't heal. Now imagine the difference between functioning with a broken leg and a broken brain.

It is certainly true that people can cry wolf, but you can do that with anything. It's not hard to find someone who lost the same grandmother a few times in college.

Dunno. I wouldn't at all doubt that HW has dealt with depression. There are, of course, different degrees of severity. I've had it bad at times (with occasional detours into bipolar disorder, which needless to say is its own special experience); sounds like you've had it even worse, & possibly more often.

Which I'm very, very sorry to hear. Take care of yourself.

At least you don't think you're a mongoose. Believing onself to be a bird is, I think, more socially acceptable.

I think the issue is some of us don't believe people have the right to hold a job they no longer can perform, even if that's not their fault. If physical or mental illness prevents you from doing your job, that's what disability insurance is for.

I agree with that. Then again, I live in a very strong employment-at-will state. You can legally be fired without cause unless you're under contract. You can be fired with cause so long as it's a legitimate cause.

My company can say "it's just not working out" and fire me on the spot. They don't need an action plan. However, it's a big corporation, so they make an action plan. They also create a ton of little responsibilities here and there that are easy to screw up even for the highly diligent, so if they want you gone for cause, it's fairly easy. My manager can put me on a terrible class that will screw up my numbers and then restrict my hours because of poor numbers, and then put me on an action plan for lousy numbers and going under on hours.

If you have a competent HR department, you should be able to trim dead wood pretty easily. Create a few rules about how things must be documented precisely that are very nitpicky and take maybe 1-2 hours per week to do properly, but generally grade your employees only on other stuff. The sort of employee that does all that stuff is usually already not the problem. The sort of employee that is great but doesn't do it gets ignored. The employee you dislike gets called on it every time, and generates a healthy report of bad conduct: grounds for termination.

Dunno. I wouldn't at all doubt that HW has dealt with depression. There are, of course, different degrees of severity. I've had it bad at times (with occasional detours into bipolar disorder, which needless to say is its own special experience); sounds like you've had it even worse, & possibly more often.

Sure, that's true. That's why I said "sends the message" rather than "proves."

I figured out how to deal with it in my career. I have a significant distance from management; if I put up good numbers, they generally ignore me. There's practically no dress code (or at least enforced dress code), so if I don't shave for a week because I can't be bothered to, nobody notices. I make my own schedule for most of the week and I generally don't work mornings (where the depression is worst). I am treating my mild ADD and the stimulant creates some artificial physical motivation just by nature of being a stimulant.

I also found that keeping busy really, really helps, but only if the thing I'm busy with is something I really enjoy. I could not be successful in a job that I didn't love.

Yeah -- sounds like a pretty decent setup. Mornings are indeed the worst for me (as is indeed the case when I'm not dealing with being depressed), but avoiding them at the workplace hasn't been an option for me since the end of my night city editor days in Little Rock way back when. (Well, except for that 1 1/2 years of unemployment from 12/82-6/84, which had its own drawbacks.) Oh, well.

At least I'm lucky enough to, as you say, be doing something I enjoy -- screwing with other people's words.

At least you don't think you're a mongoose

and a spectral, talking mongoose at that!

At least, I guess, I can say I've been on the cover of the Fortean Times.

(Note to self: Devote self to coming up with very odd revamp of Dr. Hook's "The Cover of the Rolling Stone." Where are bands like the Notsensibles now that I need them?)

I was told shortly after getting my current dead end job almost 11 years ago that the only way I could ever be fired was if I physically assaulted the director and then refused to take counseling, but not simply the former. I'm sure its tended towards liberalism enough over my tenure to have added a third step in there as well.

FTR, I do not equate mental illness with general incompetence, but at some point the rights of one's coworkers/customers has to Trump the rights of a supposedly aggrieved employee. See the case of McDonalds being successfully sued by a former employee for wrongful dismissal because she wouldn't wash her hands.

crosby

i am not built to share but i know of what you speak. my outlet was killing people. luckily i was in the war and it was approved behavior. it was also the reason that i was assessed as a 'borderline sociopath'

upon my return i married someone who is very tolerant (massive understatement) and the hard physical labor of farming plus working as a field foreman kept me engaged. i didnt' work 20 hours a day because i was superhero. i did it so that there might be a chance i might get an hour of sleep. that and of course the gin. over time it has gotten better.

i know of what you speak.

My hat's off to you, HW.

Well, if I ever wore one, it would be.

(Note to self: Add Harv to long list of "people who could undoubtedly beat my ass to a pulp if they felt like it.")

hard physical labor of farming

Unfortunately very few modern vets have this option, whereas it was a relatively common occupation after WWI & II.

gef

unnecessary. the person who gets the credit is my wife. 57 years married in december. known her since i was 14. that's 65 years. you want daft, she is daft.

lucky for me

cold

on a vaguely related note whenever there was a troublesome male member of the family (my young brother-in-law, nephews, grandsons) they got sent to my farm to the summer to work. i paid them of course. but they 'worked'.

they all turned out all right. though that likely would have happened anyway.

you will be amused to know that when that topic comes up the recurring themes are the greatness of my wife's cooking and what a sob i was. but my boys are always quick to add that whomever was a summer visitor was lucky because he got to leave come early september. my boys got me year round.

ha, ha.

i am not built to share but i know of what you speak. my outlet was killing people. luckily i was in the war and it was approved behavior. it was also the reason that i was assessed as a 'borderline sociopath'

I don't want you to think that I was making assumptions about your experiences; I was really just noting that the language you used sent a pretty trivializing message and giving you the opportunity to clarify. I think it's also the sort of language that discourages so many people from getting the help they need, or even just being understood by their social network. I've cultivated a very strong talent for casual lying because depression is so stigmatized (and it remains one of the reasons I don't post under my real name, because it allows me to talk about it frankly without risk of discovery).

upon my return i married someone who is very tolerant (massive understatement) and the hard physical labor of farming plus working as a field foreman kept me engaged. i didnt' work 20 hours a day because i was superhero. i did it so that there might be a chance i might get an hour of sleep. that and of course the gin. over time it has gotten better.

I totally get that. If you're working so hard physically that you pass out when it's over, there's not much time for self-contemplation. Depression is definitely in part an idle (not lazy, just idle) man's disease, and I strongly suspect that we're seeing it more in the mainstream because our lifestyles allow for more idleness. I'm not making some sort of statement about the morality of hard work: I would not say that idleness causes depression so much as lack of idleness covers up depression. (It's good that we have the luxury of less demanding jobs, especially physically, and it allows us to address other problems that previously were ignored.)

Also, I'm glad it got better for you. I mean, it's better for me right now because I love my job and I have a better understanding of what's happening. And while it isn't my serious poison, I completely get the anesthetic properties of alcohol.

crosby

you and morton with the language. jiminy

i am exasperated that my companies have employees who apparently can work on a sporadic basis and the organizations are hamstrung to do anything. that's not right. that is the sum total of my message

but i also think this whole jabberwocky about personal issues veers too much into wallowing.

but based on 'coaching' from my wife i work to keep that sentinment to myself

mostly

For what it's worth, I didn't take any of Harvey's posts as "deal with it yourself". I took them as "It's real, get professional help, do whatever you need to do to get healthy. But don't tell me about it once a day."

Anyway, I don't know what a fair balance is. At a high level, people have to be able to do their jobs. If you have a manual labor job and you get hurt, you might never be able to do your job again. If you have a mental illness, maybe you can't do the job that you used to do. If a pitcher blows out his shoulder and can't get guys out, he won't get a new contract. Of course it's only fair to have a recovery period and I think that's such a fuzzy thing with mental illness.

i am exasperated that my companies have employees who apparently can work on a sporadic basis and the organizations are hamstrung to do anything.

Reasonably regular attendance is usually deemed an essential qualification for most jobs, but plaintiff's attorneys & the EEOC have introduced enough wiggle room that it can be messy. Harveys situation and the one described in #27 seem to be cases where HR is going a long way to avoid a potential complaint, grievance or lawsuit that the employer would probably eventually win. Drawing the line on that sort of thing can be a problem in a lot of contexts, including trying to reasonably accommodate mental disabilities. Perhaps management needs to talk to HR about its risk tolerance.

#81 yes although it can also be the case (and I'm not saying it is in Harvey's or anyone else's situation here) where HR knows it has exposure if a lawsuit is filed, even if the employee is not being wrongfully terminated. i.e. the supervisor who makes inappropriate sexual jokes at the office may have nothing to do with why Jane doesn't show up for work on time, but you really don't want to have to take case that to court/arbitration. A well-run organization shouldn't have those problems, but many are not well run.

I would also say that I think it's a good thing that someone like Greinke came out and talked about his issues. This is not a mental health issue exactly, but I was recently diagnosed with a mild form of epilepsy and was extremely guarded about discussing it with others, especially at work, where I was concerned that people would question my ability to manage the workload/stress of the job. Even on a forum like this where I am anonymous, I've still had reservations posting about it.

As I did begin to discuss it with a few people who needed to know, however, I was surprised at how many of them had similar health issues that they were keeping under wraps, presumably for the same reason. One guy had a heart attack and didn't tell anyone (although we all suspected it when he had an unscheduled 2-week vacation). That gave me the courage to talk about it more openly, which has been a big relief. It's not like I made an announcement at work, but I also am not obsessively hiding it from my friends in the fear that word might get around the office. Anything that decreases the stigma around these issues is a good thing in my opinion.

This is the wrong thread and the wrong place for me to see it. Particularly since I've been fortunate enough to have my own issues spelled out in ink like Greinke. :)

It needs to be stated that "getting help" isn't nearly as easy as it sounds. Trying to get help is extremely important, but finding something that actually does 'help' is not an easy process.

CrosbyBird, sounds like you have a very good gig.

get the help you need and there you go

There is no royal road to mathematics, or sanity for that matter.
We just deal with it best we can, because, for us, there really is no cure. So the day goes, as Greg Luzinski perched near the line but facing toward center to offset his momentous sloth, a small step here, a step back there. Get the absolutely mandatory things done (breathing, taxes). In the long run, we're all dead. And all those missed opportunities, they're never coming back so you can't do anything about them anyway.

I gotta go check my winning powerball number.

Regards,
Tim

CrosbyBird, sounds like you have a very good gig.

Once two important things happened, it became really fantastic. The first was accepting that it was perfectly acceptable to do this rather than use my law degree. (Basically, to stop punishing myself for not practicing after spending so much money on school.) The second was recognizing the long-term financial possibilities. There's potential to make over $300k/year in private tutoring if you work exclusively for yourself (I don't do that YET), which I wouldn't have believed a few years ago.

There's potential to make over $300k/year in private tutoring if you work exclusively for yourself

Note to self: Explore remunerative possibilities of offering services as tutor on subjects of horror movies, anarchism, paranormal, American Basketball Association, comics, Philip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft.

Good article. I also don't agree that Josh Hamilton is a risk to sign because of "addiction issues". My experience with others who were drug users is that if they've stopped for years, and moved away from the other users they once hung out with, there is an extremely low likelihood of remission. The fact that Josh had some alcohol during last season and didn't get in a bar fight, miss a game, get a DWI, or any other such mayhem, indicates that he is over his old problems.

That's not how most theories of treatment see the issue of relapse.

It doesn't indicate he was over his old issues--if he was 'over' his old issues, he wouldn't have used. What's a good sign is that he didn't fall into a pattern of relapse, and that does suggest he's a decent bet as a ballplayer.

An alcoholic with five years sobriety has something like a 50-50 chance of staying sober for the rest of his life. I'm optimistic about Hamilton's chances, but he isn't over anything.

i imagine some of this is generational but i have endured depression and the issues associated with it but unlike my oldest daughter and now many others i didn't spend a lot of time talking about and seeming to wallow in the diagnosis.

No, you're just wallowing in the lush, carpeted womb of your own sense of superiority. I ran into this nonsense at times when I was counseling, people who thought all depression and abuse were essentially the same. Most of them were able to grasp that they aren't, in the same way that all cancer is not the same.

Some depression is in response to specific events, like the death of a loved one. Some depression is in response to the chronic, daily sexual and physical violence wrought on children, which changes both the brain's wiring and its response to all manner of stimuli. Some is the result of an inborn or innate chemical imbalance, and requires an entirely different approach. Some of those imbalances are easily corrected, and some are essentially intractable, requiring years of trial and error, and often the slow adjustments possible through, say, cognitive therapy.

And what Matt Clement said in 5, and Voros in 84, and other posters throughout this very interesting thread.

I find posters that can't just make their case and quit really annoying. Surely you don't have to spend a lot of time talking about it and wallowing in the feelings of self-righteousness?

My favorite parts of the thread:

get the right help. see the right people. but why all the constant noise about it? that's why greinke was my kind of guy. he kept it private. dealt with it on his own. as it should be.

i don't know why an employer should be kept in limbo. why is that ok? why is disability not an option? why am i just told, to use the vernacular of the day, 'deal'?

Try listening to yourself some time.

LTD typically covers 2 years for same-job disability, and indefinite if you can't perform any job. So, if you're a ditch digger and you hurt your back, or an bond trader who can no longer cope with the stress, you get two years to find another trade. If you're completely disabled, you have an income. That seems fair to me.

I don't know if this is the fairest possibility, but it certainly seems reasonable on its face.