Mental Health And Employment: A Personal View
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13619322199700012 |
| Published date | 01 June 1998 |
| Pages | 5-7 |
| Date | 01 June 1998 |
| Author | Bob Grove |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
The Mental Health Review 2:2 ©Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) 1997 5
Bob Grove, Director
RICHMOND FELLOWSHIP WORKSCHEMES
F
or those of us involved in the field of mental
health and employment, it has become clear in
the past year or two that we are at a defining
moment — one of those times when, although it may
seem that things are going on much as before, there has
in fact been a sea-change in perceptions and attitudes.
This is not a phenomenon rooted in the deeply and
increasingly conservative world of psychiatry,but rather
the result of pressure from people who use community
mental health services and trends which are located in
the workaday world. People do not want their lives
defined solely by the fact that they have a mental illness
which is or has been periodically disabling. Like every-
one else, they want the rewards and status which come
from having a working life — a life where they are
valued contributors to the common good. Unfortunately,
just at the point at which these demands have found
avoice, this simple basic requirement for fully-paid-up
membership of society has become veryhard to come
by — for everyone.
Aworking life — as we are reminded daily in the
media — is not what it was. For very many people it
is part time, short term and low paid. For those who
are fortunate enough to have reasonably well paid work,
contracts are, as often as not, time-limited, working
hours ridiculously long, pressure overwhelming and
thereis a pervading sense of insecurity. For those over
50, redundancy is often synonymous with early retire-
ment to a decidedly un-equitable life. Working days
lost through stress and mental ill health have doubled
in the last two decades (Thompson, 1993) and many
employers are realising that mental ill health cannot be
treated as a problem to be resolved simply by getting
rid of its victims. The wastage through disabling stress
of skilled human resources, people who have been
trained to play key roles in the development of a
business, cannot be contemplated with indifference and
there is increasing interest among some larger companies
in the provision of psychological support in the work
place.
This state of affairs is not what Galen, writing in
172AD, had in mind when he pronounced that
‘employment is nature’s best physician and is essential
for human happiness’ (cited in Harding et al., 1987).
And yet those of us who spend our lives trying to help
people into work for the sake of their mental health
would, I guess, base our philosophy on the belief that
Galen’swords aretrue. Arewe going in quite the wrong
direction in advocating the benefits of a working life
and, if not, how can we resolve this paradox that work
can be both necessary and profoundly damaging to
mental health? Here we have a problem which reaches
far beyond the treatment of mental illness and deep
into the angst of the late 20th century. Work-related
stress and the stress which comes from not having work
are everyone’s problems.
However, there is in this problem also an opportunity,
particularly for people who have suffered mental ill
health. Stress does not discriminate between the ‘well’
and the ‘unwell’, the ‘adequate’ and the ‘inadequate’,
it is inherent in the way our working lives are organised.
Thereis a crying need to make work fitfor human
beings and this forces all of us who are employers to
reassess traditional ways of working and try to find or
design work patterns and productive working environ-
ments which aresupportive of mental health. Such a
move can only be beneficial for people who have been
forced out of the labour market through mental ill health,
because thereis within it the implicit recognition that
they are not fundamentally different to anyone else.
Mental Health And Employment:
APersonal View
PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
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