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New developments and guidance mean that it is more important than ever for OH practitioners to deal with stress at work. Linda Goldman and Joan Lewis explain why.
It took the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to bring the concept of disability out of the wheelchair. Although the impact of mental illness at work is as likely to require employers to make reasonable adjustments as any physical problem, there is a continuing perception that mental illness carries a stigma.
A positive occupational health stance will help reduce the factors likely to cause or contribute towards mental illness associated with work, and will assist healthy staff members in coping with colleagues' difficulties.
As well as being helpful in dealing with the prejudice that is often exhibited towards psychological and psychiatric disorders, a positive stance will enable progress to be made in work relationships involving personality issues and promote a clearer understanding of a problem that can afflict any of us at any time.
Mental illness can be described as an invisible disability. Poor performance maybe an indicator of an incipient or fulminating condition. Depression Awareness Week (21 -26 April 2008) focused on employment issues, giving an important boost to dealing with factors at work that may be associated with any of the legions of conditions enumerated in section F of ICD-10 of the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases.
Occupational health personnel should be aware of the signs of these conditions as many behavioural difficulties arise before the sufferer acknowledges all is not well.
The underlying cause
There are frequent instances of failure to realise that a mental illness is the underlying cause of apparent misconduct or poor performance at work or bad relationships with colleagues. At the other end of the spectrum is the cavalier approach taken to diagnosing common psychological disorders without a proper history.
In Morgan v Staffordshire University (2002), the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the casual use by GPs of terms such as "stress", "anxiety" or "depression" will not amount to evidence of a disability for the purposes of a discrimination claim. Reference to the terms is not sufficient without appropriate medical records to support the diagnosis. And the diagnosis, whether or not based on objective criteria, is not usually...