Posted by bluedog on January 31, 2003, at 21:31:01
In reply to 'Rock' solid...-----all, posted by jay on January 31, 2003, at 11:27:26
Hi Jay
I tend to agree with you to a point and until recently work did not know about my depression. Unfortunately I had no choice but to divulge my illness to work when I became so ill that I needed to take an extended 4 month sick leave period from my job.
I should add that not every colleague I work with knows about my illness but unfortunately those people with the power including my direct manager do know. They are not allowed to divulge this "confidential" information to others but even those supposedly in positions of power are human and end up talking to others on their lunch break about supposedly confidential information.
In relation to people who are NOT entitled to know about my illness and who I also know won't understand about my illness I simply tell these people when they ask (and believe me when you return to work after a 4 month unexplained absence people do ask)that I was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (this is true by the way) which led to a "bit" of depression.
I am lucky because my colleagues do not treat me any differently (in fact I suspect a good proportion of them are also suffering from depression and at least two of my colleagues have since admitted to me that they are also on either AD's for depression or Benzo's for anxiety). Although my depression was probably not work related but work conditions did severely aggravate my depression, I believe that the management practices in my organisation (since YES you guessed it....a major restructure)are directly responsible for the high rate of sick leave in my organisation and I'm willing to bet a lot of that sick leave is depression related. The management are under some weird delusion that the new crap computer software they paid squillions of dollars for somehow justifies reducing the amount of staff required to do the job. Believe me this is NOT the case.
I guess, I was lucky because my employer was not aware of my illness until after the restructure was complete, but I would still have fought them every inch of the way if they had known and attempted to sideline me because of my illness.
Wendy, keep us posted. I'd love to hear every sordid detail about how your former bosses will squirm in the witness box under cross examination. I saw a re-run of the movie Philadelphia with Tom Hanks the other night and I hope you get a similar result in court [other than the dying bit at the end of course :) :) ]
warm regards
bluedog
poster:bluedog
thread:35944
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030120/msgs/36024.html