Reading the Research: Hiring Depressed People (or Not)

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article might be from the Netherlands, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that it's applicable in the US as well.  

Which is a bit of a problem, since the last statistic I saw about mental illness was that 60% of the US suffers some form of it.  That would mainly be various forms of depression and anxiety, I expect, and might not include autism.  But it doesn't much matter, because people with autism tend to develop anxiety and depressive disorders due to disabling environments.

I'm uncertain as to how often people in the US disclose our mental illness to employers.  I know it went poorly for me basically every time I did so... which was really discouraging.  It seems like most people in the Netherlands are open about it, given the 75% statistic quoted here.  I personally prefer the honesty and straightforwardness, because dismantling the stigma is harder if no one will talk about it.  Plus mental health struggles are harder with no support.

The article concludes that managers should be taught more about mental illness so they're not so concerned about hiring people with mental illness.  I think they're thinking too small.  How about we teach, in every level of school, the symptoms and common best practices for supporting people with mental illness?  

If everyone knows what mental illness is, how it works, how common it is, and how to be supportive of people who are suffering from it...  it wouldn't just reduce this obvious prejudice, it would improve everyone's experience of it.  

Personally?  I think teaching about it in an open and nonjudgmental way would severely reduce the amount of stigma around mental illness.  So the next time you, your friend, or your family member hits a bout of depression after a job loss, death of a close friend or family member, or other major life change, keep in mind that it doesn't have to be this way.  

The coronavirus isn't the only pandemic we're dealing with right now, but the mental illness issue has been almost entirely ignored.  We all suffer because of it.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)