Mental Health and Work

Unemployment, work overload, work-family balance, stress, burnout…. Workis a central fact in many people’s lives and can affect their entireoutlook. It has great relevance to mental health. Employers who carepromote healthful work practices. In work places with a less enlightenedapproach workers may experience stress. Modern technology, by speeding upcommunications, often adds to strain instead of making work easier. If anemployee experiences mental health problems, the situation often has to beaddressed by the employer as well as the person concerned.

When an individual has a serious mental illness his or her potential as aworker is often denied. Though the person may recover, or reach a pointwhere the illness is under control, entering or re-entering the work forcemay be extremely difficult. Discrimination can last a lifetime. As manytypes of chronic mental illness start at a young age, the loss toindividuals and the social burden created is immense.

These issues and many more were examined in detail at a Symposium on theafternoon of 10 October 2000, World Mental Health Day, held jointly by theInternational Labour Organization, the World Health Organization, and WFMH.The conference was opened by ILO Director-General Juan Somavia and WFMHPresident Ahmed El Azayem. Mr. Somavia spoke about how mental health fitsthe ILO’s campaign for “decent work.” Noting that workplace issues spreadfar beyond the place of employment, he pointed to their effect on families,sometimes even contributing to family violence. He discussed how insecurityand uncertainty caused by the global economy create widespread, stressfulproblems for workers. Drawing attention to discrimination against thementally ill in the workplace, he added that “the most important thing thatwe need is to have a caring eye.”

The panel of speakers introduced by WFMH Secretary General Marten deVriesincluded Derek Yach, WHO’s Executive Director for Non-Communicable Diseasesand Mental Health; Benedetto Saraceno, M.D., Director of the Department ofMental Health and Substance Dependence at WHO; Barbara Murray, ILO SeniorSpecialist in Vocational Rehabilitation; G. Hultin, ILO Executive Director,Employment Sector; and Assane Diop, ILO Executive Director, SocialProtection Sector.

The program featured a presentation from Gaston Harnois, M.D., co-author ofthe new WHO-ILO publication “Mental Health and Work.” Among other comments,he said that “it is no longer acceptable that the rate of employment ofpeople with mental health disabilities is so low….People with mentalhealth problems are at the very bottom of the disabled list.”

WFMH closed the program with a presentation by Bill Wilkerson, a Boardpolicy adviser and chair of the Canadian Business Roundtable for MentalHealth, who announced steps to launch a WFMH Corporate Advisory Council forMental Health to bring the issue to the business community. He introduced avideo made by the Rt. Hon. Brian Wilson, Canada’s former Finance Ministerand a former governor of the IMF and World Bank, who made a powerfulstatement about the importance of giving mental health a meaningful place onthe business and economic agenda. The symposium ended with another videomade by Herschel Ezrin, the Chief Executive Officer of GPC, a Canadianpublic relations firm strongly committed to supporting the cause of mentalhealth.

New York event
The ILO’s support for World Mental Health Day did not end with theconference and symposium at its Geneva headquarters. Immediately afterthese events its Senior Rehabilitation Adviser, Susan Parker (a formerCommissioner for Mental Health in the State of Maine), flew to New York toaddress the World Mental Health Day conference on “Emerging Issues in MentalHealth and Work” arranged on 12 October at UN headquarters by the NGOCommittee on Mental Health. The four-hour program featured seven speakerson social and workplace issues.

New ILO and WHO publications
In conjunction with World Mental Health Day the ILO released importantstudies of the mental health policies and programs which affect theworkforces of Finland, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the UnitedStates. WHO and the ILO jointly released another study, “Mental health andwork: Impact, issues and good practices,” co-authored by Gaston Harnois andPhyllis Gabriel. Both organizations and WFMH sent out press releases, andthe combined media effort drew broad international attention to the newpublications and the problems they examine. WFMH is indebted to theCanadian public relations company GPC and to its Board Adviser BillWilkerson for arranging its share of the successful media campaign.

The new publications from the ILO and WHO emphasize the increasingprevalence of mental health problems in the workplace, and the rising costsfor governments, employers and individuals. Anywhere from 3-4% of GNP isspent on mental health problems in the European Union. In the US, thenational spending associated with treatment of depression ranges betweenUS$30 billion and US$44 billion. In many countries, early retirement due tomental health difficulties is increasing to the point where they arebecoming the most common reason for allocating disability pensions.

• In the US, clinical depression has become one of the most commonillnesses, affecting one in ten working age adults each year, resulting in aloss of approximately 200 million working days each year.

• In Finland, over 50% of the workforce experiences some kind ofstress-related symptoms.

• In Germany, depressive disorders account for almost 7% of prematureretirements, and depression-related work incapacity lasts about two and ahalf times longer than incapacity due to other illnesses; the annual volumeof production lost because of absenteeism related to mental health disordersis estimated at over 5 billion DM annually.

• In the UK each year nearly three out of every ten employees experiencemental health problems; depression is such a common problem that at anygiven time one in every 20 working-age Britons is experiencing majordepression; work-related stress has been identified as the second largestoccupational health problem in the UK.

• Public health statistics in Poland indicate growing numbers of people,especially individuals suffering from depressive disorders, receiving mentalhealth care, a trend that can be related to the country’s socio-economictransformation and resulting increases in unemployment, job insecurity anddeclining living standards.

For information about the five ILO studies on mental health in theworkplace, or the executive summary of the studies prepared by PhyllisGabriel and Marjo-Riitta Liimatainen, contact ILO Target Groups Unit, 4route des Morillons, CH-1211 Geneva 22, Switzerland. Tel: 41 22 799 8173.Fax: 41 22 799 6130. Email:[email protected] The five studies are available on the Internet at the ILO web site: www.ilo.org; click on “Publications” then click on “Disability and work.”Also contact the ILO Target Groups Unit for information about the WHO-ILOstudy “Mental health and work: impact, issues and good practices” by GastonHarnois and Phyllis Gabriel.