Firms across Canada are starting to take note of mental health problems and the costs they represent
In the spring of 2000, Georges Badeaux received a shocking piece of employee data.
“The plant nurse came up to me and said we had 43 people on short-term disability. Twenty-six of those were due to a mental illness,” said Badeaux, director of HR at OI Canada’s Montreal plant, which employs 675 people.
“My reaction was, ‘Oh my God. We have to do something about it,’” said Badeaux.
He’s not the only one. Companies across Canada are starting to take note of mental health problems and the costs they represent to business.
Lost productive time in the United States amounts to $8.27 billion U.S. annually due to depression-related absenteeism alone. If one counts the cost of productivity at work, what’s called presenteeism, the total cost due to depression becomes $44 U.S. billion a year, according to The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Compelled by warnings that depression will become the second-leading cause of disability worldwide by 2020, a number of companies are taking initiatives to help workers spot the signs of mental illness.
At OI Canada, a glass-container manufacturer with five locations across Canada, Badeaux consulted with the union and employees to find out whether they were open to the idea of peer helpers.
These are employees who, after undergoing training, would be responsible for keeping an eye out for signs of depression and other mental health problems among their colleagues. They’re there to identify the problem, lend an ear, and recommend resources to workers in need of intervention, said Badeaux.
“One of the conditions the employees set out was they didn’t want to report back to the company in any way whatsoever. They were worried about confidentiality,” said Badeaux. His office only goes so far as to alert the peer helpers if someone’s record of absenteeism is notable. Otherwise, it’s up to the peer helper to approach an employee who’s showing signs of mental illness or vice-versa.
The concern about confidentiality is so acute that even though the company has a room for peer helpers to use to talk with employees, that room is seldom used, said Badeaux. “Employees are worried that just walking into that room would be a sign that you’ve got a mental illness. So people go to the cafeteria or they talk during their lunch break.”
Although he deliberately avoids finding out about the peer helper program, he has seen its effectiveness in short-term disability numbers. In January, there were only three people on short-term disability leave due to mental illness.
Nationally, awareness about mental health is woefully lacking, said Suzanne Dubois, executive director of the Mental Illness Foundation, a Montreal-based non-profit organization.
To tackle the level of ignorance about the illness, the foundation has been holding informational sessions at workplaces. These sessions are designed to help workers spot the problem in themselves, their colleagues, as well as their subordinates. It was the Mental Illness Foundation where OI Canada’s peer helpers were trained.
“At the workplace, the signs of mental illness may be a sudden change in personality or behaviour. A person who usually goes for lunch may start eating at the desk or find excuses not to eat with others anymore,” said Dubois.
“There may be a drastic change in the level of work as well. The person may start missing deadlines or working longer hours but with no increase in productivity.”
If managers and supervisors who encounter such symptoms fail to consider mental illness as a possibility, they run the risk of instituting disciplinary actions, which are unhelpful in such circumstances, said Dubois.
There’s such a general level of ignorance out there that the information sessions can sometimes have dramatic results, as Dubois has witnessed.
“We did a presentation one morning at this one factory, and after our presentation, two people right away went to the human resource department. They said, ‘That sounds like me. I haven’t been feeling well.’ And they received treatment.”
And in hindsight, the people who worked with these two realized they were seeing the signs all along, said Dubois. “They said, ‘It’s true, that person has been coming in late, and she didn’t seemed to be interacting with her friends and colleagues anymore.’”
Managers and supervisors have to be reminded to consider mental illness as a possibility when faced with unsatisfactory performance by a worker, said Dubois.
With one out of 10 Canadians reporting a mental disorder (see sidebar), “you’re going to have mentally ill people in your workforce.” Although the tendency among managers can often be to look away, Dubois stressed that they have a “social responsibility” as well as a managerial duty to intervene.
“If your worker breaks a leg, you wouldn’t hesitate for a second to call 911. It should be the same with mental illness, which is after all an illness. You have to look for help. Not doing anything about it, which a lot of people do, isn’t a solution. The longer one waits, the more advanced the illness becomes, and the longer the absences from work will be,” said Dubois.
One of the biggest problems with mental illness is it too often goes undiagnosed, and people affected by it go untreated for too long. Surveys have found that people with mental illness often go to the family physician, but these primary care doctors often miss the diagnosis.
To address that problem, a company has developed a diagnostic and treatment tool for the workplace. Olga Cwiek, vice-chair of Toronto-based Mensante, said the tool is a Web-based diagnostic test that resides on a company’s intranet.
The tool, called Feeling Better Now, builds upon the questionnaires doctors use to make a mental illness diagnosis. It also details a treatment plan. A person who suspects he’s affected by a mental illness can do the intranet test, then print out the treatment plan to present to his primary care doctor. The tool also follows up every three weeks with a series of questions and a note of encouragement for the patient to continue taking prescribed medication.
“A big reason for the low detection rate is the six- to eight-month waiting list to see a psychiatrist. So 95 per cent of the people go to their family doctor. And 80 per cent of the time, they’re improperly diagnosed. Or they’re put on a wrong treatment or they don’t follow the treatment properly.”
Two major Canadian employers — a financial institution and a manufacturer — have requested the tool, which will be ready for implementation in about three months, said Cwiek. She expects more companies to roll out initiatives to deal with mental health.
“Many companies are starting to understand that it’s good business. When they look at the research and see some of the numbers involved, they understand that it’s good for the bottom line.”
Mental illness in numbers
Statistics Canada recently surveyed 37,000 Canadians on their experiences with several specific psychiatric diagnoses, including:
•mood disorders — depression and mania;
•anxiety disorders — panic, agoraphobia, social anxiety; and
•substance dependence — alcohol and illicit drugs.
The survey found:
•4.5 per cent have experienced depression in the previous 12 months (comparable with five per cent for diabetes or heart disease);
•4.7 per cent have experienced anxiety disorder;
•10.4 per cent report at least one of the disorders above;
•people between 15 and 24 are the biggest group at risk of depression (18 per cent) and substance dependence (eight per cent);
•only 32 per cent of affected people saw a health professional (usually a general practitioner);
•21 per cent of affected people who felt they needed help did not get it;
•more than five per cent of affected people reported at least one day of disability in the 14 days prior to the interview; and
•more than 20 per cent of affected people had to stay in bed or cut down on activities due to physical cause (compared to 12 per cent of those who don’t have the surveyed disorders).
“The plant nurse came up to me and said we had 43 people on short-term disability. Twenty-six of those were due to a mental illness,” said Badeaux, director of HR at OI Canada’s Montreal plant, which employs 675 people.
“My reaction was, ‘Oh my God. We have to do something about it,’” said Badeaux.
He’s not the only one. Companies across Canada are starting to take note of mental health problems and the costs they represent to business.
Lost productive time in the United States amounts to $8.27 billion U.S. annually due to depression-related absenteeism alone. If one counts the cost of productivity at work, what’s called presenteeism, the total cost due to depression becomes $44 U.S. billion a year, according to The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Compelled by warnings that depression will become the second-leading cause of disability worldwide by 2020, a number of companies are taking initiatives to help workers spot the signs of mental illness.
At OI Canada, a glass-container manufacturer with five locations across Canada, Badeaux consulted with the union and employees to find out whether they were open to the idea of peer helpers.
These are employees who, after undergoing training, would be responsible for keeping an eye out for signs of depression and other mental health problems among their colleagues. They’re there to identify the problem, lend an ear, and recommend resources to workers in need of intervention, said Badeaux.
“One of the conditions the employees set out was they didn’t want to report back to the company in any way whatsoever. They were worried about confidentiality,” said Badeaux. His office only goes so far as to alert the peer helpers if someone’s record of absenteeism is notable. Otherwise, it’s up to the peer helper to approach an employee who’s showing signs of mental illness or vice-versa.
The concern about confidentiality is so acute that even though the company has a room for peer helpers to use to talk with employees, that room is seldom used, said Badeaux. “Employees are worried that just walking into that room would be a sign that you’ve got a mental illness. So people go to the cafeteria or they talk during their lunch break.”
Although he deliberately avoids finding out about the peer helper program, he has seen its effectiveness in short-term disability numbers. In January, there were only three people on short-term disability leave due to mental illness.
Nationally, awareness about mental health is woefully lacking, said Suzanne Dubois, executive director of the Mental Illness Foundation, a Montreal-based non-profit organization.
To tackle the level of ignorance about the illness, the foundation has been holding informational sessions at workplaces. These sessions are designed to help workers spot the problem in themselves, their colleagues, as well as their subordinates. It was the Mental Illness Foundation where OI Canada’s peer helpers were trained.
“At the workplace, the signs of mental illness may be a sudden change in personality or behaviour. A person who usually goes for lunch may start eating at the desk or find excuses not to eat with others anymore,” said Dubois.
“There may be a drastic change in the level of work as well. The person may start missing deadlines or working longer hours but with no increase in productivity.”
If managers and supervisors who encounter such symptoms fail to consider mental illness as a possibility, they run the risk of instituting disciplinary actions, which are unhelpful in such circumstances, said Dubois.
There’s such a general level of ignorance out there that the information sessions can sometimes have dramatic results, as Dubois has witnessed.
“We did a presentation one morning at this one factory, and after our presentation, two people right away went to the human resource department. They said, ‘That sounds like me. I haven’t been feeling well.’ And they received treatment.”
And in hindsight, the people who worked with these two realized they were seeing the signs all along, said Dubois. “They said, ‘It’s true, that person has been coming in late, and she didn’t seemed to be interacting with her friends and colleagues anymore.’”
Managers and supervisors have to be reminded to consider mental illness as a possibility when faced with unsatisfactory performance by a worker, said Dubois.
With one out of 10 Canadians reporting a mental disorder (see sidebar), “you’re going to have mentally ill people in your workforce.” Although the tendency among managers can often be to look away, Dubois stressed that they have a “social responsibility” as well as a managerial duty to intervene.
“If your worker breaks a leg, you wouldn’t hesitate for a second to call 911. It should be the same with mental illness, which is after all an illness. You have to look for help. Not doing anything about it, which a lot of people do, isn’t a solution. The longer one waits, the more advanced the illness becomes, and the longer the absences from work will be,” said Dubois.
One of the biggest problems with mental illness is it too often goes undiagnosed, and people affected by it go untreated for too long. Surveys have found that people with mental illness often go to the family physician, but these primary care doctors often miss the diagnosis.
To address that problem, a company has developed a diagnostic and treatment tool for the workplace. Olga Cwiek, vice-chair of Toronto-based Mensante, said the tool is a Web-based diagnostic test that resides on a company’s intranet.
The tool, called Feeling Better Now, builds upon the questionnaires doctors use to make a mental illness diagnosis. It also details a treatment plan. A person who suspects he’s affected by a mental illness can do the intranet test, then print out the treatment plan to present to his primary care doctor. The tool also follows up every three weeks with a series of questions and a note of encouragement for the patient to continue taking prescribed medication.
“A big reason for the low detection rate is the six- to eight-month waiting list to see a psychiatrist. So 95 per cent of the people go to their family doctor. And 80 per cent of the time, they’re improperly diagnosed. Or they’re put on a wrong treatment or they don’t follow the treatment properly.”
Two major Canadian employers — a financial institution and a manufacturer — have requested the tool, which will be ready for implementation in about three months, said Cwiek. She expects more companies to roll out initiatives to deal with mental health.
“Many companies are starting to understand that it’s good business. When they look at the research and see some of the numbers involved, they understand that it’s good for the bottom line.”
Mental illness in numbers
Statistics Canada recently surveyed 37,000 Canadians on their experiences with several specific psychiatric diagnoses, including:
•mood disorders — depression and mania;
•anxiety disorders — panic, agoraphobia, social anxiety; and
•substance dependence — alcohol and illicit drugs.
The survey found:
•4.5 per cent have experienced depression in the previous 12 months (comparable with five per cent for diabetes or heart disease);
•4.7 per cent have experienced anxiety disorder;
•10.4 per cent report at least one of the disorders above;
•people between 15 and 24 are the biggest group at risk of depression (18 per cent) and substance dependence (eight per cent);
•only 32 per cent of affected people saw a health professional (usually a general practitioner);
•21 per cent of affected people who felt they needed help did not get it;
•more than five per cent of affected people reported at least one day of disability in the 14 days prior to the interview; and
•more than 20 per cent of affected people had to stay in bed or cut down on activities due to physical cause (compared to 12 per cent of those who don’t have the surveyed disorders).
