Accommodations for Depression at Work

Good post on a key subject. I spent too many years, first connecting depression to performance at work, and then finding out about ADA. People with mental health disabilities should know about this option - though I know a lot of people don't want to think of themselves as disabled. It's very helpful if the employer has written policies and procedures explaining exactly how to seek an accommodation, but I'm sure many don't. I found that there are two levels in the process. You can start with informal discussions and hopefully work out an accommodation, especially if the employer or supervisor is understanding of the condition you have. The second option is to make use of whatever formal procedure is available, and that requires thorough documentation from doctors and a lot of other steps that make the whole thing more complicated. It's a terribly difficult problem to deal with on a personal level because your job performance is being affected - and evaluated - and no one is happy about facing and admitting to others what the cause of the problem really is.

Thanks for calling attention to this issue.

JohnD