I’m proud to have Bipolar
- emspence99
- Jan 2, 2017
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 6
I’m proud to have Bipolar. As part of mental health awareness week, I wanted to let the business
community I’m part of know about my diagnosis which was given to me in 2015. I shouldn’t have to. It shouldn’t be relevant. It shouldn’t be a risk I’m taking for future employment. It shouldn’t be something I’ve deliberated about sharing for a long time. It shouldn’t raise an eyebrow. It shouldn’t be brave. Yet it is and I’m only able to do so as I now work for an employer (and hopefully future ones) who look at this positively- many can’t. I wanted to do this as part of a broader call for change in the perception of mental health and the way the workplace currently supports it in the UK. It’s inadequate, it’s inconsistent, it’s hurtful and it’s just not good enough:
Mental ill health is the cause of an estimated 15 million days of sick leave, costing employers around £26 billion per year
Only 1 in 4 people suffering feel comfortable speaking to their manager
26% feel the workplace was the main cause of their mental health
45% of all working days lost to ill health were due to stress
As someone who has had to battle through the bleakness of this complex illness, I know first-hand we’ve got enough going on – we shouldn’t also have to deal with ill-informed perceptions and the inability of organisations to support employees struggling. Don’t get me wrong- there are some organisations and managers out there who get it. They recognise that even if someone has a diagnosis, it’s not necessarily relevant or going to affect their work negatively (my experience has been quite the opposite and I know it makes me a better employee) and if their condition does rear its head during employment, that it’s often temporary and can be reduced by employers creating supportive working environments. They know it benefits them; instead of needing to rehire and retrain newbies, they not only retain good staff who know the business and their role, they foster stronger, more honest relationships with more loyal employees as a result.
So with this in mind, why aren’t more organisations wanting to improve the support currently given? If you looked at company literature out there, you’d think there wasn’t a problem and that most organisations have it on their radar. Wouldn’t that be great? However, it’s one thing to write about it on a website and as part of a diversity policy, it’s another thing entirely to put it into action and truly support employees going through real stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health difficulties. It’s frustrating because all it takes sometimes is a manager who’s willing to listen and wants to understand- it costs nothing yet means everything.
Unfortunately I think hands are tied at both organisational and management level; with the economy leaving many companies struggling with both budget and time restrictions, there is little impetus to stop firefighting and start being strategic about their workforce. Teams are still being left under resourced, time poor, deadline driven, severely limited in work-life balance, committed to a culture of ‘busyness’; we’re pushing individuals, ignoring any warning signs along the way, until something (or someone) topples over. This was certainly the case for me. I went through an obvious personality transplant at work with all the stress I was under and despite being clear about the workload being too much and knowing it was unsustainable for me, I was asked to work longer hours and simply get on with it. A lot of people were. Despite being the ‘dream’ hire (their words not mine!), I was never once asked a question about my mental health upon my resignation, by which time I’d been honest it was a problem, and my resignation was happily accepted. These conditions certainly contributed to me developing Bipolar and then subsequently not having a job prevented a quicker recovery.
It’s vital we upskill people in the workplace to look after their own and others’ mental health and do this early, so that more serious and longer term mental illnesses don’t develop from this stress. Unless the government, organisations and managers decide to prioritise a real improvement in understanding what poor mental health is and how to support it, people like myself will still be at a disadvantage in the workplace, it will always be a risk mentioning the words mental health in the workplace, the stigma will continue and this awful illness wins. My illness has given me skills, strategies and resilience beyond anything I’d known before and I’m a better person for having it. So whilst great strides are currently being made, please can we go further, quicker?
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