This will not be a popular opinion, nor is it a nice opinion, but sometimes the truth is neither and I think it is valuable to be explicit about these things sometimes.
The "stigma" against mental illness makes sense in a lot of ways.
I do not mean: that the mentally ill deserve fewer legal rights than others, deserve any kind of bad treatment or violence or ridicule, shouldn't be "accepted", or bear any "responsibility" for their condition.
I do mean: life is full of subtle social contracts that mental illness often causes people to flout. Mental illness (in many cases) makes people less predictable and reliable. Harder to deal with.
Some people reading this will say "obviously that is true, which we all acknowledge but have no reason to dwell on, and that is why it is a complex situation that demands awareness". Others will say "that is false and you are a bad person". First group, I refer you to second group.
If you are 100% committed to the goals of your organization (growing a startup, winning a war, whatever), you will be very hesitant to add a mentally ill person to your team/company/platoon. This makes sense. It sucks. Being mentally ill sucks. This is one of the ways.
That doesn't necessarily mean anything needs to or can be done to change it.
I would caution you to separate mental illness from a person's predictability & reliability. Therein lies the stigma.
As for hesitant to add a mentally ill person, that means because of your bias you would have excluded all of these people:
Buzz Aldrin,
Woody Allen,
Adam Ant,
Roseanne Barr,
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Marlon Brando,
Drew Carey,
Jim Carrey,
Dick Cavett,
Winston Churchill,
Agatha Christie,
Dick Clark,
Rosemary Clooney,
Kurt Cobain,
Calvin Coolidge,
Jean-Claude Van Damme,
Rodney Dangerfield,
John Denver,
Princess Diana,
Charles Dickens,
Patty Duke,
Kirsten Dunst,
Richard Dreyfuss,
T. S. Elliot,
William Faulkner,
Carrie Fisher,
Harrison Ford,
Connie Francis,
Paul Getty,
Mel Gibson,
Vincent Van Gogh,
Macy Gray,
Linda Hamilton,
Ernest Hemingway,
Abbie Hoffman,
Janet Jackson,
William James,
Billy Joel,
Samuel Johnson,
John Keats,
Jack Kerouac,
Margot Kidder,
Vivien Leigh,
Abraham Lincoln,
Mary Todd Lincoln,
Jack London,
Martin Luther,
Henri Matisse,
Kristy McNichol,
Burgess Meredith,
Michelangelo,
Bette Midler,
Spike Milligan,
Wolfgang Mozart,
Edvard Munch,
John Nash,
Isaac Newton,
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Florence Nightingale,
Sinead O'Connor,
Eugene O'Neill,
Ozzy Osbourne,
Marie Osmond,
Jane Pauley,
Edgar Allen Poe,
Jackson Pollock,
Charlie Pride,
John D. Rockefeller,
Theodore Roosevelt,
Axl Rose,
Mark Rothko,
J. K. Rowling,
Charles Schultz,
Peter Sellers,
Brooke Shields,
Robert Shumann,
Sarah Silverman,
Britney Spears,
Rod Steiger,
Ben Stiller,
James Taylor,
Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky,
Leo Tolstoy,
Ted Turner,
Mark Twain,
Tracy Ullman,
Kurt Vonnegut,
Mike Wallace,
Walt Whitman,
Tennessee Williams,
Jonathon Winters,
Brian Wilson,
Owen Wilson,
Virginia Woolf,
and Boris Yeltsin
This is interesting, because Mental illness is so common that you are basically weeding out the only ones getting help, and hiring the ones who are ignoring (and therefore not treating)their mental illness.
Probably the most productive, well adjusted, and successful person I know, attempted suicide and went through years of treatment, before becoming so well adjusted. He had an illness, he got treatment, he got better.
I would rather hire someone in therapy than someone who isn't getting therapy. Even if they are both functional and normal. Why? because the guy in therapy is being proactive about self improvement and personal growth. I want that guy on my team!
> That doesn't necessarily mean anything needs to or can be done to change it.
We fight against mental health stigma for several reasons.
1) it stops people seeking treatment for MH problems
2) it stops people with physical problems accepting treatment if that treatment has any psychological element to it.
3a) often the stigma is based on fear or ignorance.
3b) sometimes the stigma is just bigotry
4a) it pointlessly reduces the quality of life for people with MH problems
4b) it pointlessly reduces the quality of life for people who do the stigmatising.
> I do mean: life is full of subtle social contracts that mental illness often causes people to flout. Mental illness (in many cases) makes people less predictable and reliable. Harder to deal with.
I know lots of people who flout social conventions. Many of those people are total arseholes that I'm sure you'd hate if you met them. None of those people have a MH problem. They're just run of the mill everyday arseholes.
Getting rid of the stigma doesn't mean "treat people with illness exactly the same as otherwise", it means "don't shame people for being ill, and don't shame them from seeking treatment".
But would I put a mentally ill person on the team? It depends on the illness and the role. I wouldn't put a hypomanic in charge of procurement, but they might glow in sales. Some people say that autism spectrum disorders make for good software testers, better than people without. What do I care (for the company) if a staff member struggles with depression, as long as the work is getting done? I've also worked in a couple of places where the 'company clown', the joker that everyone loves and raises morale, had a mental illness.
And most mild mental illnesses are not a problem, because most mild sufferrers have jobs that they are productive in. Having a couple of days off a year because of your mental illness is no different to having a couple of days off a year because you eat dodgy food and get food poisoning.
Are there functioning alcoholics? How about people that take weed on a regular basis? Are all these people unable to do their work?
Please do not categorize people with mental illness as mostly being less predictable and reliable. You are doing exactly what the article is speaking out against.
There is many levels of being able to function well or not at all with people with mental illness. Even within each area (OCD, depression, schizophrenia,etc.) people have different capabilities.
There's a huge list of highly successful, productive people who are a credit to the projects they work on, who have or have had mental health issues in the past.
If I had the chance, for example, I wouldn't be at all "hesitant" to work with actors Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, or Johnnie Depp, despite all of them having well-documented mental health issues.
I'd also be very happy to work with Richard Branson (ADHD), or if he were alive today, Nikolai Tesla (OCD and anxiety).
I've also worked with multiple people with various mental health conditions, who weren't actors, but whom were extremely good at their jobs and I'd cheerfully hire again.
Honestly, I've never seen a correlation between "mental health issues" and "would not hire".
No, the ones who are so much of a mess that they cause major problems are the unusual exceptions.
Many, many people have mental issues that they manage to control (through a variety of resources). It's a spectrum, from those people who are slightly, and occasionally, inconvenienced, to those who really aren't able to work well.
Tarring all of those people with the same brush really doesn't help anyone, including yourself.
Well, some of them just have overblown mild issues, the kind millions have. Say, Fry had some depression -- well, more than one in five people had similar experiences, and the kind of depression that still lets you have a long, succesful career, star in movies and tv and write several books, is not the kind of depression people suffer bad from. That's surely not a "lose job, ruin marriage, get alcoholic, stay isolated for months or years on end, attempt suicide several times" depression.
People with actual, serious issues have screwed a lot of people over.
Plus, from the article: "In 1987, when I was 31, I suffered a suicidal episode, which I fortunately lacked the courage to bring to its conclusion. I stood swaying on high buildings; I teetered on the edge of Tube platforms".
Please. Those "attemps" are a dime a dozen. Heck, most people think about it one time or another, including myself.
And I personally know several people who tried (far more than "teetering on the edge of the subway") to off themselves at various points. It's more common than you think. You don't even have to be that depressed. For some it was merely an attempt at attention grabbing.
> life is full of subtle social contracts that mental illness often causes people to flout. Mental illness (in many cases) makes people less predictable and reliable. Harder to deal with.
it's hard to accuse someone of 'flouting' a contract which isn't written down anywhere. that's what i think causes a lot of problems for people with mental illness.
it took me years to learn things like "people often think things and but don't say them", "eye contact and facial expressions convey a lot of information" and even "it's important to think about how other people percieve you."
there are no classes in these things; no one teaches you this in school. most people "pick these thing up on their own" - but most people also struggle like hell with math and coding. i learned coding, math and physics quite easily. i 'picked them up' because they made sense to me, while i had to work really hard as an adult to learn basic social skills that most people seem to learn in grade school.
if we were more open about all the implicit social contracts we have in the world, people wouldn't break them so often.
The "stigma" against mental illness makes sense in a lot of ways.
I do not mean: that the mentally ill deserve fewer legal rights than others, deserve any kind of bad treatment or violence or ridicule, shouldn't be "accepted", or bear any "responsibility" for their condition.
I do mean: life is full of subtle social contracts that mental illness often causes people to flout. Mental illness (in many cases) makes people less predictable and reliable. Harder to deal with.
Some people reading this will say "obviously that is true, which we all acknowledge but have no reason to dwell on, and that is why it is a complex situation that demands awareness". Others will say "that is false and you are a bad person". First group, I refer you to second group.
If you are 100% committed to the goals of your organization (growing a startup, winning a war, whatever), you will be very hesitant to add a mentally ill person to your team/company/platoon. This makes sense. It sucks. Being mentally ill sucks. This is one of the ways.
That doesn't necessarily mean anything needs to or can be done to change it.