{"id":2431,"date":"2011-02-22T08:45:37","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T08:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2011\/02\/life-at-work-should-you-tell-y.html"},"modified":"2011-02-22T08:45:37","modified_gmt":"2011-02-22T08:45:37","slug":"life-at-work-should-you-tell-y","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/02\/life-at-work-should-you-tell-y.html","title":{"rendered":"Life at Work: Should You Tell Your Boss About a Mental Illness?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"unhappywomanwork.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/71\/import\/imgs\/unhappywomanwork.jpg\" width=\"255\" height=\"245\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/span><em>Many people struggle with the question of whether or not to tell their bosses about their mood disorders at work. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/02\/17\/AR2007021700137.html\">Washington Post columnist Amy Joyce wrote an excellent article<\/a> on this a few years ago that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/02\/17\/AR2007021700137.html\">you can access here<\/a>. I have included the first few paragraphs below, but urge you to read the rest of her article, as it gives no straight answers but explores that terrain with great depth.<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you have depression or some other mental illness, what do you do about work? Hope no one notices? Disclose your illness early on and trust that your boss will understand?<br \/>\nShould You Tell is a complicated question.<br \/>\nThere is no right answer, and there are some risks to consider.<br \/>\nI discovered this years ago after watching a movie at home with two friends. One of them looked up, scared. She hesitated. And then she let it out: &#8220;Do you hear them? The helicopters. They&#8217;re coming for me, guys.&#8221;<br \/>\nThis sweet, gentle friend was scrunched up in the corner of the couch, shaking. Her Ivy League graduate degree and over-the-top intelligence couldn&#8217;t get her out of this situation. We had to get her to the hospital.<br \/>\nThe next day, after she&#8217;d spent a night in the emergency room, I called her boss to say she had the flu. Another friend and I took turns calling in the flu excuse while she huddled in her room. It wasn&#8217;t convincing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/02\/17\/AR2007021700137.html\">Click here to continue reading the article.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>*&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beyondblue1\">Click here to <b>subscribe to Beyond Blue<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/thereseborchard\">click here to follow Therese on <b>Twitter<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/beyond_blue\">click here to join <b>Group Beyond Blue<\/b><\/a>, a depression support group. Now stop clicking.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many people struggle with the question of whether or not to tell their bosses about their mood disorders at work. Washington Post columnist Amy Joyce wrote an excellent article on this a few years ago that you can access here. I have included the first few paragraphs below, but urge you to read the rest&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental-health"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Life at Work: Should You Tell Your Boss About a Mental Illness? - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/02\/life-at-work-should-you-tell-y.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Life at Work: Should You Tell Your Boss About a Mental Illness? - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Many people struggle with the question of whether or not to tell their bosses about their mood disorders at work. Washington Post columnist Amy Joyce wrote an excellent article on this a few years ago that you can access here. I have included the first few paragraphs below, but urge you to read the rest&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/02\/life-at-work-should-you-tell-y.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-02-22T08:45:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/unhappywomanwork.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Life at Work: Should You Tell Your Boss About a Mental Illness? - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/02\/life-at-work-should-you-tell-y.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Life at Work: Should You Tell Your Boss About a Mental Illness? - Beyond Blue","og_description":"Many people struggle with the question of whether or not to tell their bosses about their mood disorders at work. Washington Post columnist Amy Joyce wrote an excellent article on this a few years ago that you can access here. 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Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet.com. She is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression &amp; Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist. You may find her at her personal blog, her website, or you may follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.","sameAs":["http:\/\/thereseborchard.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/author\/tborchard"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}