Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I've got a question to open up to this conference -- I'd like to hear
more of your experiences with depression in the workplace. What caused
it? What did you do to combat it? 
  

    
1.  Think of only what is in front of me so I won't get overwhelmed
(as was mentioned upthread).

2.  Really fiercely work to do a good job, to not make mistakes. I'm
VERY painstaking during a depression when I'm at work.  The sense that
I've "screwed something up" Or "I missed this" or "I missed that"---is
dangerous for me.  Very important that when I get home I've given
myself nothing to worry about.  It's exhausting, when I get home that
IS IT, short phone calls are usually too much.

   And not that it isn't important to do a good job all the
time...just that during depression that sense is more super-charged
because the idea of adding to worthless kinds of feeling is way too
dangerous.

   And to give myself a small sense of accomplishment helps a little.
I'd rather be really tired than fuel the depression with worry and
anxiety.
  

    

Oh!  It's that worry when you get home that kills me.  I can get home and 
obsess over details of the day until I'm ready to drill a hole through the 
planet and stuff myself in it.  I'll get home, be tired, but fine.  Sit 
down in front of the TV and start to decompress and a random thought goes 
by like a shooting star and suddenly I'm rigid with worry.
  

    

I'm going to open up the discussion a little bit here-- Fawn and Beth,
you've both been able to look at the  modern workplace through some
interesting filters, both by writing this book and through your own careers.
I'd love to hear your perspectives on it -- not just about dealing with
depression, but on how you've seen it change, and how it really is.
  

    
I'll be back soon to pontificate and blither -- just want to note that Beth
is kind of swamped right now but will be along shortly.
  

    
Fawn and Beth, congratulations on a great job. I don't think "enjoyed" is
the proper word, but I found Working in the Dark to be very useful.

How long did you work on the book? How did your perception of the problems
associated with working while dealing with depression change over that
period? I find that whenever I undertake a big project, it seems like a
moving target -- as soon as I ans a major question or reach a goal on it, I
discover more questions and complexities that I'd never conceived of
earlier. (that should be "answer,", not "ans," above).
  

    
Molly...As a consultant to organizations typically around human
dynamics (culture change, building teams, coaching execs, etc) that
people are more and more depressed.  There is an extremely broad range
of triggers for this:  downsizings, market shifts, pressure to perform
especially after the IPO (oh, now we have to satisfy our shareholders
too?), doing more with less, the sense that organizations have no
loyalty, etc..  

However, I believe more strongly that a lot why people are depressed
in the workplace is because we (meaning our society "we") are quite
inept at effective communication.  Our leaders/bosses/co-workers don't
give us feedback, we don't know when we're doing a good/bad job and/or
why, corporate cultures are conflict averse (so tough stuff doesn't get
resolved...just festers) to name a few.  

Simply put, we just don't communicate very well and this causes much
room for imagination. In the absence of information, we'll make it up. 
If you have a tendency to be depressed, what you make up isn't going
to feel very good.  And thus, begins or continues a vicious cycle.  

I'm not implying that better communication is the only answer, but
it's most certainly a huge one.  

On the other hand, although the occurrence of depression has
increased, the ability to talk about it and to have some degree of
confidence that it will be addressed for you on a personal level within
your job/company has become easier.  There's still a huge chasm
between depression occurring in the workplace and it being accepted in
the workplace.  Our book will hopefully be able to shorten the chasm.  

Sam...Fawn and I worked on the book for approximately one year (give
or take).  I believe our perception of the problem became more
reinforced and validated as we journeyed through writing this book.  If
anything, I think it's made us even more convicted in our respective
beliefs about how important this issue is.  And, hopefully, our book is
a way of giving back to millions of sufferers.  
  

    
Sam, it took us almost exactly a year to write the book, but the whole
process took quite a bit longer than that. I got the idea for the book
in mid-1996 and approached Beth to work with me a few months later. It
took us several months to put together a detailed proposal, which we
then sent around to agents. We got an agent, she began to send the
proposal around to publishers, and then she died. (No, really, I'm not
kidding. She hadn't been returning my phone calls and I didn't find out
why until I opened the New York Times and read her obituary.)

So that brings us to mid-1997. We sent the proposal around again and
signed on with a new agent, who began shopping it aggressively to
publishers. Got a lot of feedback along the lines of, "Great idea,
fantastic, really well-written proposal, but we don't think there's a
market for it." (In what universe is 11 million people not a good
market?) In early 1998, our agent told us she was putting the proposal
on the shelf for a while to see if things would change while it was out
of circulation.

At that point, I think we had both resigned ourselves to never writing
the book. We both moved on to other projects. And then one day in May
1999 I got a call from the agent saying that one of the publishers that
had previously passed on the proposal had called her back to make an
offer. I immediately called Beth and said, "Hey, wanna write a book?"

And here we are!
  

    
As for my thoughts on the modern workplace: In the early '90s, people
seemed to be shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that the employer/employee
contract (i.e. "you do a good job for us and we'll do well by you") had
withered so quickly and dramatically. Ten years later, the very notion
of that contract seems quaint and almost naive. Today, everyone seems
to be waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing it's coming -- maybe
not immediately, but inevitably. It's like an endless, systemic anxiety
attack.

Mind you, I haven't had a "real" job since the depths of the last
recession, when I was 23 years old and got laid off from a dying
newspaper. Other than brief stints as a contractor, I've been working
predominantly from a home office for more than 11 years now. So all of
my experiences with the working world have been through that filter.

I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather be an independent, with
all the issues that entails -- fluctuating income, the never-ending
marketing, the need to provide your own health insurance, the potential
for isolation, etc. -- than go back to being an employee whose
economic survival is entirely dependent on a single employer who
couldn't care less about me. 
  

    

I wonder if the rate of depression in the workplace is greater now than it 
was in the days when people went to work for one employer, stayed for 25 
or 30 or 35 years, retired and got a pension.  I don't suppose that there 
is any sort of statistical tracking for this?
  

    
I don't think there's any tracking of depression specifically as it relates
to the workplace, period.
  

    

Fawn, how do you cope with those fluctuations? I've decided recently that me
being the point of flux is better than a company being the point of flux
(after getting laid off twice last year, I'd rather have it be my fault than
anyone else's).
  

    
>I've decided recently that me being the point of flux is better than
a company being the point of flux

I like that.  There's a book called "You, Inc." (I think) that takes
off from that premise.  

Which brings me to a question -- how do you see the whole business of
finding meaning in the workplace ("reinventing work") relating to
workplace depression?  

Have you encountered people for whom being depressed seemed like an
appropriate response to their situation?  Like the first step on a path
toward deeper discovery?  Would you ever be willing to argue that the
"depressed" individual in a particular setting is the one exhibiting
the most sane response of any of them?
  

    
Absolutely, we've encountered such people, and not only are we willing to
make that argument, we spent an entire chapter on it. And we concluded by
advising readers in an actively dysfunctional solution to do all they can to
get out -- even if it means a temporary pay cut. No paycheck is worth your
mental health.
  

    
Has anyone successfully used the ADA to sue for wrongful termination
because of depression?
  

    
That's kinda what I was getting at with the question about 9/11,
too. There are times when it's *normal* to be not 100%, and I see
employers pressuring individuals to not be fully human, in a way.  My
employer's HR person, after 9/11, posted a cheery message about the
availability of short-term counseling for anyone who was still
troubled. This was no more than a week later. It wasn't phrased
*quite* that badly, but almost. I consider it *healthY to be still
troubled by that a week later (although not to the point of total
paralysis or anything.) It was just sort of surreal. 
  

    <scribbled by fsquared Wed 20 Mar 02 19:52>
  

    
Actually, let me rephrase that: I am quite sure people have successfully
used the ADA to protect themselves against workplace discrimination due to
depression, but I don't have any exact figures. I do know that in the most
recent statistics I can find (1999), the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC), which administers most parts of the ADA, received 2,858
complaints about discrimination as a result of mental illness, and more than
half of those complaints had to do with depression.
  

    

Thanks for sharing that. It would be interesting to see what happens in the
next decade with the ADA and depression. Despite the stigmas against it,
it's definitely been discussed much more in the media and the press.

Oddly enough, the other night, I was watching VH-1 (it was a sleepy kind of
night) and I saw both Sheryl Crow talk about her continual bouts of
depression, and Billie Joe Armstrong (singer of Green Day) discuss that he
didn't know what it was till he was older, but he has always suffered from
panic attacks, and he just thought it meant he was going insane.

It seems like we've maybe begun to turn a corner if our rock stars (and not
just Tipper Gore) are willing to be out about chronic depression and anxiety
disorders. I'm thinking of how a fifteen year old with panic attacks might
feel if she learned her favorite fun-punk singer had the same attacks that
she did. She'd probably feel reassured in some way.
  

    
Kids listen to the lyrics.  It's all there.  

It's still not an easy thing for them to bring up with adults though.  
  

    
(waving) I had to come in and say hello here and sing the praises of
my byline cohost, Ms. Fawn. 

And betsys, I do think it's interesting seeing how employers  appear
to be reacting to 9/11 in relation to "distance from ground zero" more
than almost anything else I can figure out. You related your employer's
experience. My husband, who works in the West Village, had to attend a
group session with a counselor, and was given a most peculiar "So
you've had a traumatic event at your workplace" brochure outling signs
of PTS and depression. My stepfather, whose business was in the WTC and
lost several employees, has had to undergo much more rigorous company
mandated procedures. And a number of his coworkers are still out on
disability for stress related disorders. It's great that his employer
has been so vigiliant about wanting to help the staff, but it's
disheartening to think that to get that kind of attention you need to
have been in the building.

Fawn, have you received any response yet from people interested in
your book specifically because of 9/11? I'd think the need for a guide
like this couldn't be more timely.
  

    
Hi, MB! I'm glad you came by!

Shortly after 9/11, Beth got a phone call from someone who'd found our
web site (http://www.workinginthedark.com) and wanted to interview her
about how the attacks had affected employees emotionally. She and I
discussed it, and at the time we concluded that what people were
probably dealing with was not depression, but Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder -- something we didn't feel we were qualified to discuss,
especially since we were feeling pretty raw ourselves. So she turned
down the interview request.

We haven't yet gotten any other response directly related to 9/11, but
now that a little time has passed and I've had a little time to
reflect, I think the book is appropriate in some ways and not in
others. PTSD manifests itself in *very* different ways from depression,
so the parts of the book dealing with coping skills aren't directly
relevant. However, everything we say about people's rights under the
law and how to deal with discrimination applies as much to PTSD -- or,
indeed, to any mental health issue -- as it does to depression. So when
we do get those responses (and I expect we will), that's what we'll
say.

That being said, even though it goes against my every instinct as a
freelancer accustomed to working every possible marketing angle, I
personally am not going to go out of my way to draw a link between
depression in the workplace and the events of 9/11. I just have a
visceral distaste for the idea.
  

    
That's very true, about PTSD. I wonder, though, as you go farther from
NYC how much of it is PTSD and how much of it is more like depression
or anxiety, worry about the world and the future and the job market
and such....?
  

    
I'm not sure there's any way of knowing -- although I think it's
pretty fair to say that someone in Ohio who's never been to New York
and knows no one there probably isn't suffering from PTSD as a result
of 9/11.
  

    

But it's odd to realize that much of NYC seems to be either suffering from
PTSD or depression -- and certainly anxiety. How frequently do things like
this happen in the American workplace?