Sandy Naiman remembers strolling into the office of J.D. MacFarlane and telling the head of Ryerson's journalism program that she wanted to be a writer.
Then she explained why she had not applied earlier. “I told him: ‘I just came out of the Clarke' [a psychiatric hospital]. He appreciated that I was upfront and honest.”
Mr. MacFarlane admitted her on the spot and later helped Ms. Naiman land a job at the Toronto Sun.
She worked at the paper for three decades, from 1977 to 2007, and the fact that she suffered from bipolar disorder was never an issue, even though she was admitted to hospital for treatment fairly frequently.
“I had an annual breakdown from 1977 to 1988,” she says. The absences lasted up to two months.
“Mental health is not a steady state for anyone,” Ms. Naiman says with a laugh.
One in five Canadians will suffer from a bout of serious mental illness like depression or bipolar disorder. Many recover and many more manage their disease effectively, but hiding one's condition at work remains the norm.
Employees, from clerks through to chief executives, fear that, because of the stigma surrounding mental illness, they will be looked down upon or passed over because of their diagnosis.
But that was never the case with Ms. Naiman.
“It's liberating to be open and honest,” she says. However, she is quick to add that disclosing to co-workers and bosses is not for everyone.
Ms. Naiman worked at a newspaper, a place where quirkiness and eccentricity is well tolerated. She is also exceptionally self-confident.
“Most people don't have the savvy and personality to declare they have a 49-year psychiatric history and turn it to their advantage,” she says.
In fact, Ms. Naiman's openness was a key to her recovery. She has even turned it into a part-time career with her popular Toronto Star blog “Coming Out Crazy” at http://thestar.blogs.com/mentalhealth. (She also teaches at Seneca College in Toronto.)
Mary Ann Baynton, a consultant with Mental Health Works, a program sponsored by the Canadian Mental Health Association, says employers cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the reality of mental illness in the workplace.
“There is a business case for acting,” she says. “You can't just look away and say: ‘It's not my issue.'”
Mental-health problems are the leading cause of disability claims and one of the main reasons for sick days. But those who struggle daily also have an impact on the bottom line of companies.
“The cost of lost productivity is about 5 per cent of payroll,” Ms. Baynton says.
In seminars for employers, she urges them to reach out to employees with mental-health issues, help them get treatment and be supportive when they return to work.
Ms. Baynton says it's a simple three-step program: Notice, approach the person and offer help. “Nobody wants you to diagnose, treat and counsel employees. That's somebody else's job,” she says.
For those with more severe mental illness, one of the biggest challenges is actually finding work that can ensure a stable lifestyle.
“Work is fundamental to psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery,” says Chris Summerville, executive director of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada.
He says the vast majority of people with mental illness, even severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, are willing and able to work, “but the myths get in the way.”
Mr. Summerville says psychiatric disabilities need to be viewed just like physical disabilities and accommodations put in place to integrate everyone in the workplace.
Rather than ramps for wheelchairs or computer voice programs for those with visual disabilities, employees with psychiatric disabilities may need to be accommodated with a desk in a quieter area of the office, or with reduced hours, but they should not merely be cast aside, he says.
“People need competitive work in an integrated setting, not to be segregated in a sheltered workshop,” Mr. Summerville says.
Mark Gruchy, a criminal defence lawyer in St. John's, has not required any form of accommodation, but he has felt the sting of social prejudice and stigma, having been diagnosed with bipolar illness when he was 15.
He was a great student in high school, but the illness came on suddenly and was so severe that he dropped out and drifted for several years before getting treatment that worked.
“From age 15 to 23, my life was severely disrupted,” Mr. Gruchy says.
His saving grace was an adult education program at the College of the North Atlantic, which allowed him to complete a high school equivalency and gain confidence. “The program saved my life. It helped restore my sense of worth.”
Given his stellar marks, he won a scholarship to the University of New Brunswick and graduated from law school before entering private practice as a lawyer.
“I've been stable and healthy through university and working life,” Mr. Gruchy says.
“Recovery from illness – even serious illness – is a lot more common than everybody realizes.”
Still, Mr. Gruchy, who is 31 today, has been open with his boss about his mental-health history and says, if anything, it has been beneficial to his work.
“I can empathize with my clients,” he says.
Not only are many people with severe mental illness tangled up in the justice system, but the social stigma of being a convict is not that different from that of being a person with mental illness.
“When you have been judged and labelled for being sick, you have a sense of what it's like to be on trial,” he says.
André Picard is The Globe and Mail's public health reporter.
