Previous Health Record Disclosure?

[Rufus200]

Is your previous employer allowed to disclose your health record when asked for a reference?

Previously I had severe clinical depression, I asked my work for help many times over 3 months and they ignored me and outright refused to reduce my workload/hours. The week I got signed off they gave me 7 new projects on the Monday morning. I was given an excellent yearly review the month before I was signed off and I know I was good at my job, even when I was sick my work didn't decline. I ended up being signed off for 6 weeks, my GP and I both felt I was ready to go back but that work was not to stress me out and needed to reduce my hours for the short term. HR refused and forced me to stay signed off. This went on for 10 further weeks before I had enough and quit. They obviously didn't want me back and were going to eventually fire me for inability to do my job. I left professionally even though I was very angry with them for forcing me out. I know my managers were left in the lurch when I was signed off and really resented me for it.

I then went travelling for 3 months. I work in an office now and find it very boring and wanted to go back to my profession.

I applied for a part time job doing exactly the same thing as previously but with a different company and after many rounds of interviews and tests, was down to the final 2. I said my reason for leaving was to go traveling as I didn't want them to know I had been so ill previously (how do you make severe clinical depression sound positive in an interview). I was told they would let me know within 48hrs. 2 weeks later they finally spoke to my recruitment agent after avoiding his daily phone calls and said that I had not been negative about myself in the interview and so they didn't get a real feel for my personality, so they went with the other candidate. WTF? I get if I wasn't the best candidate but the 2 weeks of refusing to respond was weird.

Anyway the person that got the job quit after 8 weeks, so I reapplied and got nowhere. I now think that my previous job must have told them about my health record, are they allowed to do that? If they can it means I will never get a job in my profession ever again and I really miss it. It looks terrible that I had 16 weeks of sick leave. Is there a way to find out what they said about me?

[DaisyFlowerChain]

As long as it's factually correct, they can state the number of sick days you took.

Maybe the fact that you did lie to them put them off, it was wrong too and if they discovered it on the reference then it's likely the reason you didn't get anywhere the second time.

[maggiethemagpie]

Agreed, they would probably say the amount of time off but not the reason. Can you approach your former employer to ask them what information they provide on a reference?

Don't feel like your old career is over, if you now have some further experience, even if it is not as relevant, then any reference from your recent job would also be taken into account. Even though you may still need a ref from your old employer, think of any new reference as 'diluting' it.

In my experience employers are very bad at understanding mh issues, I too had a depressive episode several years ago and after finally telling my employer the truth I was 'asked to leave' a few weeks later.

Beware of assuming the reason for not getting the job was definitely due to your depression though. At the final stages, where all the candidates can probably do the job, it can really boil down to the tiniest things that makes them pick one person over another.

[EldonAve]

I don't work in HR but I think your previous employer can give a reference which details how many sick days you took
They are unlikely to have said the reason for your sick days