Is the Issue of Mental Health Driving Employers Mad?
The Government announced this week that people with mental health problems are to get extra help with managing their condition to help them continue to work.
Apparently pilot schemes run in conjunction with the mental health charity Mind have achieved 90% success in helping people with fluctuating mental health conditions retain their jobs.
Regrettably, despite the prevalence of mental health conditions in the UK today, there is a huge ignorance about mental illness in general and the effect of mental illness on individuals in particular. This leads to those suffering from such conditions being stigmatised. It also leads to sufferers being discriminated against, not only generally but also in the workplace.
Stigma and discrimination can prolong a sufferer’s condition in that they became less likely to seek help which in turn delays treatment and leads to isolation, and therefore is a spiralling down of their condition, so that recovery takes longer. This also prevents sufferers from getting jobs.
Severe mental illness in England, according to the mental health charity Rethink, costs over 77 billion pounds a year when the costs of mental healthcare, loss of earnings and a poor quality life are combined. This is a monumental problem which charities such as Mind and Rethink are attempting to combat.
Of particular interest to employers is the fact that severe mental illness amounts to a disability as defined by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
This Act makes it illegal to discriminate against people with a disability and indeed, there still exists widespread discrimination of people with disabilities.
The Act defines that a person has a disability when he or she has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day to day activities.
The trouble with mental impairment is that there is no obvious sign of it. When considering the effects of a disability, you have to take into account that person’s condition on the basis that they are not taking any medication for the condition in question.
Employers should therefore take extra care in considering an application for employment from someone who discloses that he or she is suffering from a mental condition or has suffered from a mental condition.
To ignore such an application or to refuse to employ without an objective consideration of the position and that person’s suitability for it can amount to discrimination and be contrary to employment law, which will lead to a claim whether or not the person is employed.
Consequently, a prospective employer should interview all suitable applicants for a job, regardless of any condition or disability they may have disclosed in the application form. Having done so, they can then come to an objective decision on the suitability of employment. Not to employ on a subjective view that someone suffering, for example a mental condition would not be a suitable person to employ is discriminatory.
For more employment law advice on this difficult subject, contact the ELAS employment team on 0161 785 2000 or Mind or Rethink and similar mental health charities direct.
Visit www.employment-law.uk.com for more information.
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