What Employer should do?

Every company should consider developing a mental health policy. This should aim to provide a workplace which tends to prevent depression and which encourages its prompt and effective treatment. This should also improve the overall performance of the organisation and of individual employees. It should reduce the costs of sickness absence, both from physical illnesses and depression.

There are four main areas to consider:

I. Raising awareness

Everyone in the company can be made aware of the importance of recognising and helping colleagues who may be suffering from depression. This should include every level of the workforce, from the shop floor to senior management. Common ways of doing this include posters, leaflets, or even giving information about depression in appraisal interviews. Everyone needs to understand that positive action can result in great benefits to individuals and the company as a whole.

2. Health education for employees

Employees can benefit from knowing about mental health and learning how to reduce stress. Time management techniques, assertiveness training, and the use of 'team-building' exercises can protect employees from depression and other conditions. The workforce and management should have information about the early recognition of depression, and the circumstances in which people are most likely to become depressed. It is particularly important to emphasise that depression is unlikely to permanently affect a person's ability to work. This area of a mental health policy should also include discussion of pre-retirement planning, preparing people for life after they eventually leave work.

3. The organisation of the business

The way in which a business is organised and operates can have an effect on the mental health of its workforce. Important areas include the physical environment, responsibilities of the job, the level of supervision, and how personnel are selected and trained. Thoughtful adjustments can make employees more satisfied with their jobs and may well improve the performance of the business as a whole.

4. Occupational health services

Occupational Health Services need to be backed by senior management if they are to develop programmes to educate line managers and the workforce about depression. They should also be responsible for recognising and counselling depressed employees, and in helping them to return to work.

Occupational Health staff will have experience of sensitive issues such as workplace confidentiality, job security and the timing of the return to part-time or full-time working. They also know about the particular stresses and strains of the work environment. Occupational Health nurses and doctors are well placed to work closely with family doctors or other specialist employees, whilst being sensitive to the employees' need for confidentiality. Contacts should be established with the local branches of self-help organisations.

The exact form of such a programme depends upon the type of business as well as the size of the organisation. Any company can, however, expect to improve the management of their human resources in this way, often with great benefit to both the company and its employees.

Depression in the workplace

Depression is a common illness. At some point in their life, around 1 in every 5 women and 1 in every 10 men will suffer from depression. At any given time, 1 in every 20 adults is experiencing a serious 'major' depression. A similar number will have a less serious depression. Naturally, problems that are common in the general population are common in people at work. In any one year about 3 in every 10 employees will have a mental health problem, and depression is one of the most common. It is not just distressing for the person involved. It makes them less productive at work and is responsible for high rates of sick-leave, accidents and staff turnover.

What is depression?

If you have not suffered from depression yourself, or do not know anyone who has, it can be difficult to appreciate what it is like. We can all feel fed up, miserable or sad after a distressing personal loss. This may be the death of a partner or relative, the break up of a marriage, or the loss of a job. Sadness like this will usually pass with time. Occasionally it will just drag on, or it may get worse and worse. On the other hand, unhappiness just comes 'out of the blue', for no obvious reason. If depression goes on and on, is severe, or dominates every part of someone's daily life, it should be treated as a medical illness.

Certain symptoms can give a clue that someone is suffering from the kind of depression that will need help.

These may include:

• Sadness which does not change from day to day
• Crying for no apparent reason
• Anxiety, worrying, irritability or tension
• Disturbed sleep
• Reduced appetite and change in weight
• Tiredness, lethargy and lack of motivation
• Loss of interest in normal activities
• Forgetfulness and poor concentration
• Thoughts of worthlessness and hopelessness

Effects of depression on work

Someone suffering from depression can start to behave out of character, both at home and at work. Other workers or employers may notice that someone is:

• Working slowly
• Making mistakes more often
• Unable to concentrate
• Forgetful
• Late for work or meetings
• Not turning up
• Getting into disputes and arguments with colleagues
• Unable to delegate tasks
• Working, or trying to work, much too hard

Depression can seriously affect someone's ability to work effectively. It may be so bad that he or she will have to stop work completely for a time. When it is not quite that bad, most people will try to soldier on, painfully aware that they are not doing their job as well as they usually do. If someone's depression can be recognised and helped, they will get back much more quickly to their normal performance at work. Much needless unhappiness and suffering can be avoided.

Fighting Depression

Yes, you can...

How do you combat depression? Well, it's the little things that count first. I know, everyone wants the big stuff, the whole enchilada, let's save the universe, etc. That always reminds me of the Chinese prayer I have been mindful of all these years, "Lord, please reform the world, starting with me." Depression starts in small ways, you just don't notice it until it looms up and smacks you in the head. So you unravel it by starting the same way. First, the fundamental choice must be made to move out of the depression. That is the turning point. Then, begin with small things, things you can start and finish and feel positive about. It might be weeding the garden, making a new g-string, drawing up your own greeting card to send to someone. Small things you can feel that you have accomplished, just for you. These help anchor you in the world. Sounds silly, but it works. You will find it especially helpful to focus on giving of yourself to others in some capacity, in real ways. Try it and see - if you dare. :)

You can get mad as hell at the depression, it will help show you where you are connecting. The other thing with depression is to move it apart from yourself, cause it to go sit in a chair and really look at it. Usually depression springs in the shamanic from two things, self-pity and the separation from the familiar with nothing having replaced it yet. We always think the world, people, circumstances, owe us something and/or that life isn't fair. But if we look in a detached way we find that we are exactly where we have brought ourselves to be, and the conflict between where we are and where we want to be creates depression. We feel there is no space to move. But there is always space to move. We just may not want to in the ways we need in order to create the outcomes we want, so we stay depressed. I always try to be sympathetic with people on this path who are suffering with depression. The response I got from my mentor when I mentioned my depression when I was young man was his mimicking of a whiney person talking about being so depressed, and then I was reminded that I was as dumb as a post. After that there were several colorful southern metaphors. He was absolutely right - I hated that about him. :) But basically you are in conflict internally; blaming it on everything external only prolongs it.

How you heal from depression has a great deal to do with where it started, the patterns that exist in your energy, and your own personal make-up. We're all unique individuals in the way we are made up and we react differently to things; even things that may bother you once may not the next time. We share commonalties in being human, but individually over the course of a lifetime we develop unique and individual patterns energetically.

Patterns from childhood, or even later in life can be recapitulated to take from them their energetic sting. This releases energy and breaks those patterns. This is crucial for some types of depression and can usually make the difference by itself in losing those heavy bouts of depression. You have to start before you enter the depression though, once you're in the maw of the beast very little will work except to just grab on with all four sets of nails and your teeth and ride the bastard out.

As far as the drugs are concerned I advise people to stay off them. What I have seen is that they tend to eat up your energy right at the midline and generally make a mess. People are treating them as though they are a cure for depression, they aren't. They were originally designed for people suffering severe depression and were not supposed to be used long term. I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression, now I don't have it, which is medically impossible because it is considered incurable.