The U.S. Mental Health Crisis and the Workplace
Real World Impact: This is the first in a series of Alerts that will provide guidance to employers on navigating the complicated mix of concerns that can arise when dealing with employee mental health issues. Introduction: Over the past 10 to 15 years, U.S. employers have increasingly been encountering employee mental health issues that impact an employee’s ability to perform his/her job duties as expected and require some variety of reasonable accommodation . Navigating such mental health issues can be difficult on several levels – i.e., personal, professional, and operational. Complicating this landscape is the inherent relationship between mental health, addiction, suicide, and workplace violence, all of which have been trending in the wrong direction for some time. The Big Picture There are some obvious factors that have precipitated this mental health issue trend, including the ubiquitous use of cell phones, social media use, and the fallout from COVID. It appe...