The New ADA: What's in it for you?

Congress has passed and we're waiting for the President to sign amendments to the ADA of 1990. The amendments have considerable promise for people with mental illnesses, as well as people with epilepsy and other conditions which are episodic and usually successfully treated with medications. At the same time, it seems likely that it will take a considerable "shakedown cruise" before the implementation really reaches its goals.

For me, I am cautiously hopeful that at some future date, if I become unstable again, I will be able to tell my employer that I have bipolar disorder that is temporarily out of whack, not that I "take seizure medications" that are slightly out of balance at present. I hope that if I ever have another psych hospitalization (and mine was just four business days long -- probably the shortest ever in this metro area!) that I won't return to the office to find my boss recommending new jobs in other companies, and, when that failed to move me out, collecting every negative comment from five years of annual reviews to make a case for probation and then firing from a job I'd held for a decade.

I've noticed a couple other issues that might be challenging for the new ADA. In my state, it takes a medical exam, including a statement about all the meds you take, to obtain a commercial drivers license. Any psych meds are grounds for a refusal, and a "conscientious" examiner will pass the info on to the private licensing division so you lose your personal driving license as well.

Then there's the insurance issue. We're working on parity, which is great. But how many self-insuring companies (like mine) require employees to provide a full health history to an in-house insurance management team as part of the hiring process? Will we be safe in disclosing or will we have to continue to do our best not to? (Thank goodness my company's form asked if I'd ever had "a nervous breakdown" ... which I didn't figure described my situation at all!)

Anyone else got any observations, comments, hopes, expectations?