My husband works with a woman who has untreated bipolar. She is continually disruptive to the entire office. Her mother and brother have bipolar, too. Management will not deal with it as she is a very productive worker. I think she pads her check with looking busy when she is just talking and bothering other people. Management expects the employees to just get along with her. This woman says she has OCD, too - also untreated. She thinks it makes her a better worker. She is driving everyone crazy with her incessant talking very loudly interjecting her opinion into every conversation even if it does not involve her. She is incredibly opinionated about everything - even if she is wrong. She is also in menopause - which makes it all so much worse. The stress level in the department is very high and it is all due to this woman's bipolar mood swings. It's affecting my husband's health. He has a colostomy. He is now getting stomach pain and blockages which he has never had before during our 7+ yr. marriage. This woman refuses to admit she has bipolar even though people have told her she has all of the symptoms. It is so complicated, but it is destroying moral. How can my husband and the rest of the people in his computer drafting department deal with a situation like this when this woman's behavior getting progessively worse with time? Management and Human Resources feel they cannot do anything about it so they do nothing at all. Seems like they are just waiting for her to get so bad she does something that gives them grounds to fire her. But, by then . . . everyone else will also be burned out and fed up, too. Can you help?
Q: How can employees deal with untreated bipolar & OCD employee when management won't?
I feel your pain. I was the manager in an office with a bipolar employee, and it was a nightmare. His defensiveness, tantrums, and constant paranoia drove us all crazy. On top of that, even though he could be a productive employee, he could go through childish phases where it seemed like he had no common sense or intelligence at all. It was a seven-month nightmare.
I informed my supervisor about how disruptive this employee's actions were, but he was reluctant to do anything because he could be a productive employee. However, what turned the tide was when the bipolar employee became defensive and argumentative in a joint meeting with the supervisor and a couple of clients. At that point, my supervisor finally experienced the bipolar employee's paranoia, defensiveness, and delusions for himself and placed him on probation. The problem was solved when the bipolar employee turned in his recognition the next morning. However, it took my supervisor being personally affected before he took any action.
One thing worked somewhat for us employees who had to deal with him everyday. Even though he was constantly throwing false accusations at us, he wanted to feel like he was "part of the group." We used that to our advantage, and over time we tried to have as little to do with him as possible. If I would have had the authority, I would have fired him myself because of his disruptiveness. However, with our company's structure, I didn't have that authority. I don't wish a bipolar employee on anybody -- it was seven months of hell!
I am a supervisor with an assistant who is bipolar. Unfortunately, the system I work in does not know it, does not want to know, and does nothing about her disruptive and unproductive ways. It appears we are working in a day and time when we have to be so liberal with our employees that management cannot do anything without feeling like a law suit is coming their way.
I've been so stress-riden this year trying to work with this person. I now have 3 new doctors as a result of STRESS from this situation.
I would enjoy hearing what others have done to make these situations for others better. Afterall, we are losing productivity in the workforce and our health!
I am a supervisor with an assistant who is bipolar. Unfortunately, the system I work in does not know it, does not want to know, and does nothing about her disruptive and unproductive ways. It appears we are working in a day and time when we have to be so liberal with our employees that management cannot do anything without feeling like a law suit is coming their way.
I've been so stress-riden this year trying to work with this person. I now have 3 new doctors as a result of STRESS from this situation.
I would enjoy hearing what others have done to make these situations for others better. Afterall, we are losing productivity in the workforce and our health!
First, the ADA doesn't really offer much protection for MI. So all of you who are concerned about needing to tolerate MI employees ... reality is, you don't have to. But if you start firing wholesale, you will be losing up to 1 in 4 employees, many of whom are your top performers.
The ostracism and isolation someone else mentioned on this thread is the most common strategy -- calling team meetings and neglecting to inform the MI person; all the Dept. Directors go out to lunch together regularly but fail to invite the MI person; the entire OFFICE orders lunch to be brought in but fails to notify the MI person so she can join the order. Of course, most of us have become so used to this that it won't drive us out ... it just makes us less effective.
And of course, if you have a quality personnel review process, then the "soft" skills that are part of most jobs now need to be on the reviews. That allows a manager to raise the subject and clarify what behaviors exactly are issues, and to set specific standards and expectations. If they're not met, you document and eventually get to fire. Other employees get to feed in if the process allows for 360 at any point.
Now, let me tell you the story from the employee's perspective. I was fastest to reach associate in my company's history and my productivity issues came only after diagnosis, from meds that made me forgetful, disorganized, etc. until the right meds combination got worked out. Unfortunately for me, toward the end of this process, I got a boss who was undiagnosed BP. So when Cymbalta put me in the hospital (for four days ... shortest in-patient in that hospital's history, and I got permission to bring my laptop so I could work a couple hours a day), she took it as reason to comb through five years of reviews (out of 10 years employment) for everything I'd ever been critiqued for. Got me fired, but the company gave me 180 days on salary to "work it out" because of that lawsuit anxiety you mention (you have six months after a firing to file an ADA suit). I consulted the best ADA attorney in the region, who said my case wasn't worth two years of my life and $50,000. And, ironically enough, during my 180 days, my former boss got walked out of the building for egregiously classic manic misbehavior -- and I got a four-figure bonus for cleaning up the mess. After I'd been fired!
All that just to say that this is kind of a mess from the patient's/employee's side too. If we tell our employer that we're undergoing treatment, our employer finds a reason to fire us. If we don't tell our employer, then we're having really weird performance issues that are inexplicable and might get us fired.
I personally find it frustrating that my husband could be completely out of work for six weeks after heart surgery, part-time for another four weeks, and slow for months thereafter, with incredible hits on his company's insurance, and no one thinks anything about it (in fact, his boss and his wife brought food to me and my mom at the hospital). But MI stuff we're so unable to deal with that it represents a kind of "performance issue" we just can't endure.
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I'm bipolar and did not know it. I thought I was just overly stressed and started to get depressed. I started taking Zoloft so that I may continue working which seemed like it helped until I started experiencing dysphoric mania. I came to my supervisors and explained to them how I was feeling but none of them said anything. Later I took vacation to see if the time off would help. During that time is when it got worse. I stopped taking Zoloft because SSRI do not help bipolar. Now I am dealing with some of the worst depression I have ever felt and unemployed because I was not able to return to work on time. I do not blame anyone for this but it would have been helpful if someone else would have been educated about mental disorders or at least bipolar "Dysphoric Mania" because at the time I was seeking help but was being hesitant because my mind would convince me that I would be fine.
I want to live a normal life. I want to deal with stress like a normal person but now I'm afraid I will have another manic moment. I don't want to take the drugs but I'm afraid I have to.