Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
My only issue with this is how he seems to lump in the &quot;mental health&quot; days that people without diagnosed mental health disorders face with the stigmatization that the other group feels. I fully support people who need to deal with mental fatigue in these ways, but if just taking time off &quot;cures&quot; your mental health issues, it&#x27;s a different class of problem from what others are dealing with.<p>The &quot;still&quot; is incredibly premature when it comes to mental health in the workplace. We&#x27;re just scratching the surface when it comes to acknowledging, accepting and understanding those with mental health disorders. Depression, ADHD and even Autism Spectrum and OCD are all on the leading edge of disorders that are receiving less stigmatization and more acceptance over time. But there&#x27;s a lot more in the DSM-V that are completely misunderstood or completely unpublicized. And our workplaces are completely unprepared to deal with them.<p>I saw this first hand at my previous employer. We had a coworker who had a number of personal disagreements with other coworkers. In discussing it with my mother, a psychologist, she mentioned that much of his behavior sounded, to her, like someone with Borderline Personality Disorder. He was everyone&#x27;s best friend up until they did anything he interpreted as being against him at which point he&#x27;d flip and try to sabotage them at every opportunity, including filing numerous baseless claims with HR. The organization was completely unprepared to deal with an individual like him. Each HR claim he filed was treated seriously, but there was never encouragement or a requirement that he talk to a trained mental health professional who could have been helped guide the company to a productive outcome. Instead, his conflicts with other employees caused at least 3 of them to quit before he was eventually forced out of the company for taking on someone who had too much pull with upper management. I can only imagine the carnage that would have been caused if he had been a she and had been able to abuse the sexual harassment policies.<p>HR is only trained to help the company avoid getting sued. But there&#x27;s damage to both the employee and the company that can happen without the lawyers getting involved. The company&#x27;s HR failed him and the rest of us that had to work with him by not knowing how to deal with that sort of psychological disorder.<p>Rather than &quot;it&#x27;s 2017 and mental health is still an issue,&quot; I&#x27;d say, &quot;it&#x27;s 2017 and we&#x27;re finally starting to acknowledge the long road ahead of us.&quot;