Jonathan Naess writes in The Guardian on Christine Laird‘s “victory” over her bullying bosses at Cheltenham Council. His excellent piece highlights all the main issues around discrimination faced by people with a history of mental health problems trying to get jobs. But one thing stands out to me:
“She spent three months in a psychiatric hospital and is now permanently disabled.”
I’ve heard other people say similar things about their own experience. One has always stuck in my mind:
“I know I had problems when I went into hospital. But when I came out, I was mentally ill.”
I’m sure, or at least I hope, there are people who have spent time in psychiatric hospitals who have found that when they are discharged they are feeling better and recovered from their health problems. After all, that is what most of us would expect from treatment for a medical condition, isn’t it?
But I also know that for many people, the traumatic experience of being removed (sometimes forcibly) from a relatively safe and supportive home setting to the prison-like confines of a mental health unit is a major contributing factor to their ongoing struggles to lead an ordinary life.
People seeking psychiatric help are likely already to be feeling frightened and distressed. Yet we expect them to “get better” by transplanting them into an alien environment surrounded by similarly disturbed people, where they are usually heavily sedated causing confusion and impaired cognitive functioning.
Any non-compliant or challenging behaviour is then likely to be viewed as symptomatic of illness. When people are discharged it is often to a lifetime of monitoring, control and maintenance of symptoms where any attempt to return to an ordinary life is also viewed with suspicion and as a potential risk for relapse by health and social services.
So all of these people, who from my experience of working with some of them and trying to help them to recover a normal life, whatever that may be, are often kind, warm, generous, creative and talented people whose confidence has been shattered by their experience – all of these people with so much to offer our society are in effect discarded by the broken system that is supposed to help them.
I don’t know Christine Laird and I don’t know any of the details of the case other than what has been reported. But she must have some pretty good work skills to be able to get and keep a job as Managing Director of a local authority. From my own personal experience, an unsupportive, overly-critical and discriminatory boss can make life at work hell. To my mind that is bullying.
The Cheltenham Council leader said that if he had known that Christine Laird had experienced episodes of depression when she applied for the job then he wouldn’t have employed her. As Jonathan Naess points out in his article in The Guardian, that is discrimination. It’s illegal. If anyone should be sacked and sued for wasting taxpayers’ money, it’s him.
I hope that Christine Laird can now get on with recovering her life and not end up as she is described now, permanently disabled. But as her husband said, it’s not the financial cost that matters, but the human. Workplace bullying and mental health discrimination nearly cost Chrisine Laird her life.