Mental illness and the impact on the workplace

From today’s Globe and Mail:

The working wounded

Mental illness is costing the Canadian economy a staggering $51-billion a year, and each day 500,000 people miss work because of psychiatric problems. What are employers doing about it? Not much.

Mental illness accounts for a stunning 40 per cent of disability claims and sick leaves in Canada. While employees jest about “mental-health days,” they are no joke. Every day, 500,000 Canadians are absent from work due to psychiatric problems; the most recent estimate pegged the annual economic burden of mental illness at a staggering $51-billion. The World Health Organization estimates that by 2020, depression will be the leading cause of disability on the planet.

“Depression is a colossus,” said Bill Wilkerson, CEO of the Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health. “It’s one of the biggest killers and one of the biggest disablers.”

And it carries a cruel stigma. “There’s this attitude out there that if you come back from cancer, you’re a hero, but if you come back from depression, you’re damaged goods,” Mr. Wilkerson said.

Most people do return to work after bouts of mental illness. Yet few employers are accommodating, and fewer still reach out to help staffers before they descend into crisis.

“We can’t afford to be tossing any workers overboard,” Mr. Wilkerson said. “We have a brain economy and we can’t let all these brains go to waste.” The situation, he added, is a “national calamity.”