To think that a trend is starting here

You and I I think Doodledog, as lacking in compassion and empathy as we apparently are despite our own experiences. Frankly I have better things to do than keep up this futile argument, though obviously some people have plenty of appetite for it and can even spend time looking up statistics of people who have joined the forces. Simone Biles perhaps proves my point that no matter how good you may be at something, if mentally you can’t handle the pressure for whatever reason you should accept that you need to do something else, or work at a different level, rather than let others down, a decision I think Kate probably made given her colleague’s comments about lack of ambition; her ambitions lay in a different direction and good for her. Admitting to real mental health issues isn’t easy.

I suppose it's all relevant isn't it? If I see someone going to pieces over something which seems minor to me, I find myself wondering why they are in such a state but it's serious to them.

Kate1949

I suppose it's all relevant isn't it? If I see someone going to pieces over something which seems minor to me, I find myself wondering why they are in such a state but it's serious to them.

The point being that none of us know what has lead to the final straw

Thank you Gill57. I’m not dismissive of genuine problems. I’ve had clinical depression for many years but I have medication, mostly it keeps the black dog docile, and whilst I’m open about it I don’t complain about it, take my medicine, have a regular GP check up and get on with life. Yes I have had to have a stiff upper lip in order to continue in my career rather than dissolve into a weeping mess (and no, I’m not suggesting anyone posting or mentioned here is or has been a weeping mess). Mortgage to pay, dearly loved child to feed and clothe, obligations to clients, colleagues, said child and other family excellent incentives, giving up absolutely not an option and in fact those drivers were highly beneficial. Sitting at home in these circumstances, dwelling on things, is not a good thing. I’ve seen at first hand the very negative consequences of someone doing that. The point I have been trying to make throughout is the great difference between those who have real mental health problems which need understanding, support and treatment, and those who do not but use them as an excuse. These people exist and I am neither naming nor hinting at any particular person. Living with depression, or with someone who has it, gives one a fairly good radar I assure you. Other mental health conditions are, regrettably, available.

...and I am neither naming nor hinting at any particular person.

You are though.

I'm sorry about your MH problems Germanshepherdsmum, but you are being very dismissive of people whose problems present differently from yours.

I have spoken about my close friend before so am sorry if you have heard this before, she has complex mental health issues, she works for a charity, her skills and ability in her job are in my view partly due to her own experiences, there are times when she becomes very ill and needs to be off work. I would guess that many of her colleagues do not possess the skills she has. Organisations often have the foresight to balance support with recognising the skills people can bring to a role.

A few posters on here are suggesting that having a disability - be it physical or a mental health issue - which periodically interferes with your ability to do your job, means you should ‘leave and find something else’. I thought that in the 21st century we’d moved away from attitudes like these. Disabled people have specific skills just like other people and to suggest that we don’t utilise people’s talents just because they may have problems in sustaining their performance, is short sighted at best. These same people are expressing support for Simone Biles and others who have found it necessary to withdraw from the games because of MS issues. How is it that any different from someone who has periodic issues at work ?

The problem is that there is no targeted support for people with disabilities in the workplace any more - various government departments used to be involved in providing support so that people with disabilities could work in open industry, and those who couldn’t, worked in sheltered conditions. This meant that people with disabilities who were new to the workplace were given targeted support to help them find and retain suitable work. People who became disabled were help to either adapt and retain their employment or retrain. Those who couldn’t work in open industry found work in sheltered conditions which gave them a cushioned environment in which to be as productive as they could. Then along came the Tories, the help dwindled and the sheltered workshops were deemed a waste of resources and closed. Now most of the support is left to charities with the DWP taking care of the basics like fares to work and modifications to premises - even that is minimal with strict qualifying conditions. If we leave the disabled community behind we lose a wealth of talent and we condemn people to feeling useless in addition to the problems their conditions cause on a daily basis. How hard is it to support and encourage, instead of whining that you have a bit more work to do if someone goes off sick ? I had this problem myself and was ‘encouraged’ to take a less stressful role in the same organisation. If I hadn’t , the consequence probably would have involved a visit to the Jobcentre.

Sorry that first paragraph should have read MH issues, not MS - bloody predictive text !!

I have always 'got on with it' despite feeling fearful for most of my life. I was frightened at school - Irish Catholic nuns and priests terrorizing us - frightened at home - drunken, violent, abusive father.
We were neglected children. My pillow used to be covered in lice from my head. My father beat me up badly when I was a child. I watched my mother and sister being regularly beaten. My mother let a dentist take all my teeth out when I was 11. Bullied and laughed at at senior school because of the way I looked. My mother died when my sister was only 14. My brother took his own life, I was visiting my teenage nephew in hospital when he died. His mother dying at a young age because she never got over it. 12 years ago I lost all my hair with no explanation and no assistance from the NHS. My husband got cancer, thankfully in remission. We had all the usual money worries along the way, DH redundant 3 times etc. This is just some of it. I'm not looking for sympathy but no one knows why people are like they are. I am still fearful, waiting for the next bad thing.
Of course there have been good things. I have a lovely daughter, granddaughter and family. We have a nice home and lovely holidays. I was OK (ish). The hair loss broke this camel's back. I try, but can't really sympathise much with someone who is traumatised over a bad haircut for instance.

A few posters on here are suggesting that having a disability - be it physical or a mental health issue - which periodically interferes with your ability to do your job, means you should ‘leave and find something else’. I thought that in the 21st century we’d moved away from attitudes like these.

I assume that that is a dig at my posts? I do wish people would name names instead of the passive aggressive 'some people', or 'a few posters'.

I am the one who brought in the ability to do your job, and likened it to having a physical disability, so I will assume that this is what you are getting at, and respond again, although I have made the point several times already.

If you go blind and you are a bus driver, what do you do? However much you miss driving your bus, and however much you didn't ask to go blind, however much it was not caused by a weakness of character or anything else, you are not able to do that job, so you have to leave and do something else.

If you want to be a brain surgeon, but don't have a specialist degree, you won't get an interview. Is that discrimination, or is it a sensible means of ensuring that only those with the right capabilities are able to operate? Either way, you can't be a brains surgeon without the qualifications, so you do something else.

What is the difference between the above examples and someone with a condition that means that they cannot deal with stress, particularly if that person responds to this by taking time off work and expecting colleagues to pick up their workload on top of their own, regardless of the impact on the colleagues' mental health?

What have I said there that suggests that I don't support making full use of people's abilities? Someone who can't handle stress will have other abilities, and they should find work that enables them to make the best of them.

You yourself are suggesting that there should be separate facilities for the disabled - is that not discriminatory, or at least acknowledging that sometimes people need to be cut some slack in the workplace? I am not arguing for anything less.

The difference is that I am also taking into account that when someone is regularly off work because some of the tasks that their job demands are too much for them, this impacts on their colleagues, and can have a detrimental effect on the colleagues' mental health.

I have never said that people with mental health issues shouldn't work, or that they are in any way responsible for their condition. What I have said is that just as if someone can't be a brain surgeon without the requisite qualifications and aptitude, or a bus driver without the ability to see clearly, someone who doesn't have the ability to deal with stress should not expect to be paid to do a stressful job if they are not able to do it.

And yes, I do think that this is very different from someone discovering that she is unable to continue to compete at the highest level, and making the decision to leave. That could not have been predicted, and was not a pattern of behaviour.

What Simone Biles did is what I wish my colleague had done, instead of spending the last ten years of her time in the workplace doing as little as possible, safe in the knowledge that others would do the things she didn't want to do.

We didn't 'whine' about it, incidentally, but I can assure you that it wasn't 'a bit of extra work' that we picked up - it was often the whole of a professional role that was split between the two of us who were left when she went off for months at a time, and that was on top of our own stressful workloads. She should have paid a visit to the Jobcentre, and found something less stressful to do, but she didn't, because she was used to the salary that she was paid for (not) doing a stressful job.

@Doodledog. I wasn’t having a pop at you in personally but since you’ve brought it up, I think your examples, blind bus drivers, and brain surgeons, are a bit ridiculous - not really reflective of what’s actually happening in the world is it, and also quite patronising. I have a serious birth defect which confines me to a wheelchair and bipolar disorder which causes me intermittent problems. I don’t work anymore but when I did, I had a high level of skills and was lucky enough to work for a long time in an environment where my employer valued my skills and made adjustments - it was a trade off that worked for both of us. When the management changed, the support disappeared and the attitude became, adjust and cope, or leave. In the end I took a lower paid and less skilled, and subsequently less satisfying role, which ended up having a very detrimental effect on my mental health. So tell me, am I and people like me less deserving of job satisfaction than anyone without the disability ?

I have first hand experience during the whole of my working life, of wonderful, supportive people on the one hand, and uncaring, condescending and blatantly discriminatory people who only cared about the bottom line, on the other. I have been discriminated against, told I’m a fire hazard, been passed over for deserved promotion on the grounds that there was doubt whether I would cope physically (shouldn’t I be the judge of that ?) and been told not to leave the premises in my (unpaid) lunch hour because my mobility problems may mean I can’t get back on time !! I’ve had work colleagues assume that because my legs don’t work, there must be something wrong with my intellect too, and been spoken to like I’m an imbecile. So please don’t assume I don’t know what I’m talking about. And what is a ‘pattern of behaviour’ to you, is actually an uncontrollable MH issue to someone else. So what are we supposed to do - keep all disabled people in unskilled work ‘in case’ they can’t cope ? Attitudes like yours are what have made disabled people one of the most marginalised and poorly paid communities in society. And where exactly was I suggesting seperate facilities for disabled people ? I was talking about the very valuable sheltered workshops for disabled people which were shut down from under them by a Tory government using exactly the same reasoning as yourself to justify it. They were not discriminatory and no-one was forced to work there - they existed to give those disabled people who felt they couldn’t cope in outside industry, a chance to make a contribution they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to make. When the government closed them, they promised the employees that they would be given specialist help and funding to find other work. To date, I don’t know of one, single ex employee who has ever been given anything but the bog standard and inadequate facilities available in the local Jobcentre. Look, I don’t want to get into a battle with you because it will derail the thread, so I think we have to agree to disagree. Sorry.

Kate you have had unspeakably terrible times in your life and I feel for you. I know you’re not looking for sympathy, people with the worst problems rarely are. I’m not surprised that this has had an effect on your mental well-being and resulted in the loss of your hair, which is a particularly cruel thing for a woman, and I hope it grows back soon. It’s appalling if you had no help from the NHS. You can be forgiven for being pretty pissed off with people who moan about a bad haircut. I’m pleased your husband is in remission and long may that continue. You and he will be in my prayers tonight (yes guys, I’m a complete witch but say my prayers - for others only, having been taught that except in extreme situations praying for yourself isn’t good form - without fail). That you were able to become a loving and selfless wife and mother after such a childhood is quite miraculous. Forgive yourself for not understanding your brother’s difficulties - it’s so easy not to see what becomes obvious with hindsight and at a time when you haven’t been there yourself. And no, everyone, that’s not ironic - I’ve said that experience has tuned my radar pretty well. It’s very brave of you to tell of your experiences.

Allegrias1 yes absolutely Meghan and Harry, but no other specific person. And what I have said is said purely about people who do not have genuine mental health issues, as I have made clear many times - not people who do, but ‘present’ in a different way.

Doodledog I know exactly where you’re coming from. I too worked in a professional setting, as a solicitor, and unexpectedly taking on someone else’s workload, or a share of it, when you are already desperately busy and that person’s absence could have been avoided in the first place by their having taken a job they could cope with, must be infuriating. If someone knows they have a physical or mental condition which means they are likely not to be able to give the level of commitment they were hired and are paid to give, they should have been honest and taken a job they knew to be within their capabilities. I was always up front with my employers, and later partners, telling them that I had asthma, epilepsy and depression but that medication perfected over the years meant that none of those conditions would prevent me from doing my job properly. Nor did they but it wasn’t easy. Knowing clients’ expectations as I do, I very much doubt that many of the posters on this thread would have been so sympathetic as they come across if I’d been acting for them and suddenly gone off without warning to nurse my mental health. I’m sure they would say otherwise but I know from reactions to something unavoidable such as food poisoning that that is unlikely in the extreme and that my unfortunate already frazzled colleagues would have had a lot of abuse when they couldn’t immediately jump to it, as did I on my return after only one day. I know that of which I speak.

Thank you Germanshepherdsmum. People on here are very understanding. Sadly my hair won't be growing back. I have to deal with it. I'm sorry for your troubles too and everyone else's on here. I am guilty of self pity sometimes.

Alegrias1 yes absolutely Meghan and Harry, but no other specific person.

They do count, they are real people. You suggest that Meghan was putting it on, that she didn't have a real MH problem. So if you can think it about her, you can think it about anybody who doesn't meet your criteria for having genuine MH issues.

Well, firstly, if you weren't referring to my posts, perhaps you could point out who your comments were aimed at, as this is what happens when people are passive aggressive on discussion boards - the people they are getting at don't realise, and others think the comments are about them. In a similar vein, you can't fling about accusations about 'attitudes like mine' and then insist on the last word by 'agreeing to disagree', as I would like a right of reply.

All I can say is that if you did your job without adding to the workloads of others then we have no need to disagree. I have worked with wheelchair users and would never assume that their disability interfered with their job. Suitable adjustments were made, as they should have been, and there was no difference between their performance and others'.

I have never said or implied that people with health issues, physical or mental, should do unskilled work. I have said that they should find work that they don't find stressful, which is not the same thing at all.

My examples were deliberately left field, so as not to risk using something that might apply to someone on here, as I didn't want to personalise the issue. Another example would be a kennel worker who was allergic to dogs. The point, whichever example you prefer, is that if there is a health reason that prevents someone from doing their job, they should find another one. A decent employer should try to find something more suitable if possible, but if that isn't possible, I don't see the alternative, if others aren't going to be disadvantaged. That does not mean that suitable adjustments shouldn't be made wherever possible. If my colleague had gone part-time, for instance, and been paid for the hours she actually worked, there would have been a budget to employ someone else to do the work she routinely left to others.

As for the sheltered workshops, my point was that you used them to show that in some cases people are not able to continue to work in 'mainstream' workplaces, which seemed to back up what I am saying. Nothing I have said was in support of their closure, not at all.

Sorry - that was to Pammie1

None of us know when/if we will have MH issues or what will be the trigger.

Compassion and understanding is needed for anyone/everyone suffering whoever they might be.

It's dangerous ground when thinking an unqualified person can decide if another is having mental health issues.
Without ever having met them, too?

Well I think you do spot a trend.
Simone is a very special case and being 'the one' and with bad history I hate to think what she is facing.
Big money leads many parents to really push their youngsters into sports with big prizes and sponsorship. No way to treat your littluns. Remember Mozart - and he did have a gift, but was not a happy or normal man.

Thanks Kate. I have nothing to complain about though. My depression started with post natal depression but I got my wonderful son out of all that and I couldn’t imagine life without him. I didn’t detect any self pity in what you said, just honesty, but you’d be very entitled to feel it in spades and no-one could blame you. Life hasn’t been kind to you and you must be due some happiness. I’m glad you have siblings and children to give you the love and support you deserve, as well as your husband. I’m so sorry your hair won’t grow back. That’s a bitter blow. Are you able to wear wigs or scarves? Such a difficult thing to adjust to. If I could give you some of mine I would but here’s a hug instead. By the way do you know of the Black Dog Gang on here? I only lurk but there’s comfort to be found. Apologies if you already follow it.

Thing is Doodledog, someone can be ill and put on others at work in their absence with any illness. I did it off and on over 5 years due to ongoing cancer treatment. My friend with bipolar has had 7 episodes in the 15 years I've known her. Some have needed extensive time off work, of up to 2 or 3 months. One employer forced the end of her contract over it. Her current employer is very, very supportive. The result of that is that even though she had an episode last year, she was able to have a very staged return to work a lot earlier than would have otherwise have happened.

People with disabilities are still people and deserve to be integrated into society and the workplace.

Thank you GSM. How kind. In relation to my hair, after much trauma and expense I have found a hair system fitted by a wonderful salon. I have mentioned this many times on GN. It's marvellous really. No one who doesn't know me would know. Yes I am aware of the Black Dog Gang thread. It is very helpful.

I think, we humans, are pretty amazing in our ability to deal with stress but let's be honest some people can cope better than others, just like some people can swim better, sing better etc. However, we all have a point at which we can become overloaded, we are not machines, and then we need to be able to take a break, it doesn't mean we can't come back though. I have huge respect for SB, admitting that she's not able to keep herself safe takes courage and she is not letting her team down IMO, I think her tally of medals are evidence she can take stress. Surely we are all on a MH continuum? Sometimes we can find it in ourselves to continue when life gets tough, sometimes we can't and need to be able to ask for some help. I belong to an equestrian community which sometimes can be a bit "stiff upper lip" but is changing as we see too many young people taking their own lives because they can't deal with the stress. Instead of telling people to get out of the kitchen if it's too hot perhaps we should be more understanding when people start to struggle.

I think panic attacks can strike at any time especially when under pressure to perform .
It must be devastating to have to pull out .
I'm sure it's not an easy decision, they would have wrestled with the feelings of letting others down but at the end of the day no Olympic Medal is as important as your health . If they had pulled out because of a physical ailment no one would be judging them . We really need to have more empathy towards mental health issues

GagaJo

Thing is Doodledog, someone can be ill and put on others at work in their absence with any illness. I did it off and on over 5 years due to ongoing cancer treatment. My friend with bipolar has had 7 episodes in the 15 years I've known her. Some have needed extensive time off work, of up to 2 or 3 months. One employer forced the end of her contract over it. Her current employer is very, very supportive. The result of that is that even though she had an episode last year, she was able to have a very staged return to work a lot earlier than would have otherwise have happened.

People with disabilities are still people and deserve to be integrated into society and the workplace.

I completely understand that. But you posted upthread about someone who didn't work, and who used the excuse of MH to opt out of doing things she didn't want to do. That is the sort of thing I am talking about.

The colleague I mentioned was honestly off 'ill' at least once a month for something, and had three long episodes of absence for stress-related illness. I'm talking 6 months at a time (she was always well enough to come back when the full pay was about to drop to 50%). She had staged returns after the long absences too, so was unable to take on full responsibilities for longer, which meant that we covered for her for a year or so each time, on top of our own workloads.

Are you honestly saying that that was fair to us? Her manager tried to deal with it, but was reported to HR and the Union for 'discrimination'.

I know that this is additional information, but she did things like insist on having late starts because she couldn't be on the bus in the rush hour as the journeys were too long. The said she was travel sick, yet took holidays abroad in camper vans and drove for hours. I don't want to say too much in case she reads this, but I also know that she worked out when she could next take time off sick without losing pay - I saw her with the calendar and she admitted that this was what she was doing.

I have never said or thought that people with disabilities are not human, and have no idea how you came to that conclusion from my posts.

The OP (*Pammie1*) asked if she was being unreasonable to think that people had a responsibility to ensure that they are mentally and physically well enough to enter the Olympics.

My response to her first post was to say that whilst I do support an athlete's decision to pull out on mental health grounds, I think that people should apply her principles to the workplace, where their absence has an impact on a greater number of people. I'm wishing I hadn't replied now, as people are putting words into my mouth, and Pammie1 has taken a massive U turn ?.

I am very much in favour of sick pay being paid to all, and of course I don't want to see discrimination against people with any form of illness or disability - I just don't think that it is discriminatory to expect people to find a job that suits their capabilities. Of course colleagues should make allowances when people are ill, but that should not extend to a long-term commitment to doing someone else's job as well as your own.