Case study

Until Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, most companies decided how to handle such problems on a case-by-case basis, often depending on such factors as just how challenged the employee was and how sympathetically the supervisor responded. And even the ADA didn't help employers much with deciding how far to go to accommodate people challenged with a disability. The law requires employers to make all "reasonable" accommodations for people with disabilities, including mental ones. But given how subjective and personal psychiatric issues can be, employers have struggled to develop clear policies about what to do in such cases. In the past few years, the courts have begun to delineate how companies must act.

The good news for employers is that the guidelines are surprisingly sympathetic to the dilemmas they face when someone shows signs of mental illness. If a worker becomes depressed or suicidal, the employer must try to find a way to help, by, for example, granting a short leave of absence or changing his or her work schedule. But companies don't have to lower work standards, tolerate misconduct, or give someone a make-work job-steps some employers have taken out of fear of a lawsuit, experts say.

A key U.S. Supreme Court case further clarified the law by specifying that an employee suffering from mental illness isn't disabled if medication allows the person to function like anyone else. "Most courts are taking a narrow view of who is covered under the ADA," says Peggy Mastroianni, an associate legal counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Any signposts are welcome, because mental illness has posed one of the most difficult challenges to employers-and the courts-since the ADA took effect in mid-1992. Each year, clinical depression alone causes a loss of some 200 million working days in the United States, according to a report released by the International Labor Organization. Psychiatric claims filed with the EEOC doubled in a recent fiveyear period. This made them the single largest type of ADA claim. A Supreme Court decision went even further. The case involved two sisters who didn't qualify to be pilots at United Airlines Inc. because of poor vision.

The Court ruled that the sisters couldn't sue for discrimination under the ADA because their disability was correctable (with glasses or contacts). Since then, lower courts have applied the ruling to say that employers can consider the mitigating effects of interventions such as medication. In other words, if an antidepressant drug enables a depressed person to function normally, he or she isn't considered disabled and can't claim discrimination. The new guidelines should help employers avoid being pushed into unreasonable actions. It's now clear that companies don't need to lower their standards to help a troubled employee, says K. Tia Burke, a Philadelphia management attorney who had one client company that did just that. Nor do employers have to invent light-duty jobs, as other clients have done, says Burke. "Many employers are so loath to get involved in these cases that they bend over backwards and provide more than what is reasonable," she says.

1. What responsibility do you think an employer has when an employee has mental illness? Do you agree with the current legal climate described in the case?

2. How can an employer manage to accommodate those with mental illness?

3. Can anything be learned from the study and management of stress and conflict that can be effectively applied to mental illness in the workplace?