Calling In Sick: Dealing With Mental Illness At Work, Part 1
Inspired by discussions with allnurses members and others, this is the first in a brief series of articles about how anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions affect nurses in the workplace. These illnesses are among the most common reasons we miss work, and they contribute to billions of dollars in lost productivity each year. They also carry a high cost to sufferers in terms of stigma, loss of job security, and self-esteem issues.
NursesDisabilitiesArticle
The alarm clock jolts you awake as it does every morning at 0500, alerting you to the fact that today is yet another work day. You groan and pull the covers over your head momentarily, wishing for nothing more than to crawl into a warm cave like a hibernating bear until you feel human again......if you ever do, that is. And you're beginning to doubt that more with each passing day.
The prospect of another shift filled with unceasing demands and busy-work tasks threatens to overwhelm you as you force yourself into the shower, and once again you suspect that there really are worse things than death.....namely, going on like this. Certainly no one appreciates the fact that you have to throw yourself against a metaphorical wall every day: not your family, who counts on you to put food on the table; not management, who calls you on the carpet for every minor infraction of their million-and-one rules; and definitely not the patients who run you ragged with endless requests for warm blankets and Coke, and then complain when you're not fast enough.
You're depressed and very much aware of it, but other than taking the medication the doctor gave you at your last visit, there doesn't seem to be many options. You can't be in your therapist's office every afternoon; you don't want to burden your friends with your troubles; and you certainly can't talk to your co-workers. They're all dealing with their own stresses (both on and off the job), and besides, you don't want to end up in the unemployment office, like one fellow nurse did after suffering a 'nervous breakdown' at work.
So what can you do? You heard what people said about her.....that she was crazy. Looney-tunes. Psycho. What if they were to say the same things about YOU?
The truth is, if you need medication and/or therapy to cope with your condition, you are among the one in five Americans said to have what authorities call a diagnosable mental illness. Depression and anxiety are the most common of these, and while they are treatable, they are two of the major reasons why workers call in "sick".
It doesn't stop there, of course. Nurses are human, and as such we're subject to the same psychiatric issues as anyone else: schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, personality disorders, even dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple-personality disorder). The fact that the general public has no idea of this speaks well of the thousands of nurses who battle mental health problems and still manage to take good care of their patients.
For the most part, we struggle in silence, fearing the stigma that surrounds those who carry such a diagnosis. Everyone has seen news stories about people with whispered rumors of mental illness being accused of all sorts of horrible crimes; who wants to be associated---even remotely---with the likes of the Sandy Hook school shooter or the Aurora, CO theater killer?
But sometimes, our 'nonconformity' is discovered despite our best efforts to hide it. A nurse with depression may stop coming to work and fail to notify her supervisor; one with bipolar disorder may have a manic episode that increases her productivity at the same time it creates inappropriate levels of hostility which she cannot control. And if we are unlucky, we may find ourselves being eased out of our jobs, or even terminated outright when our employers deem it "unreasonable" to make accommodations for our disabilities.
This short series of articles on dealing with mental illness in the workplace is inspired not only by events in my own life over the past couple of years, but by conversations with others here at AN and with former co-workers who have shared their stories with me. It is my sincere hope that one day, healthcare professionals with brain disorders will be viewed with the same compassion as those who suffer from other medical conditions.
