Mental Health in the Workplace
In the 1960’s film and television were culpable in how they portrayed characters with mental health issues; think Alfred Hitchcock. Five decades on we embrace characters like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory despite his obvious OCD and Asperger’s Syndrome. He is portrayed as having somewhat of a decent social life and definitely a successful career. The wonderful widespread acceptance of conditions like this has paved its way into the workplace over the years but I fear not as much as it needs to. This is a huge problem because mental illness is widespread and affects members of our families, our friends and certainly our workmates. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (2008) around 1 million Australian adults live with depression and over 2 million have anxiety. On average, one in five women and one in eight men will experience depression in their lifetime. One in three women and one in five men will experience anxiety. Considering the enormity of these figures it’s troubling to...