Does having MH disability excuse poor behaviour towards a manager

[dubiousdecision]

An employee with high anxiety and depression (bad enough to be classed as a mental health disability) is becoming increasingly difficult to manage.

Office based work in the public sector.

This has now escalated to a complete lack of respect in emails which are shared with other team members.

Issues which have been discussed are frequently escalated and accusations have been thrown around about management behaviour which are unfounded and due to the employee having 'read' more into a comment or taken offence at the wording of an email. At times this boarders on fabrication which is obvious as all meetings are minuted.

Just wondering if any one has had a similar experience and any advice that helped ?

You are required to make reasonable adjustments for a disability. This foes not mean people behaving any way they like. IMO what you’ve described isn’t reasonable - they are unmanagble and highly disruptive

The corona virus is only making things worse but the manager is also suffering additional stress (as is the whole country) so is finding it difficult to modify their communications as sensitively as usual. I can't see this improving any time soon.

No, it's not an excuse. The employee should be spoken at ASAP about it. Health condition does not excuse disruptive, poor conduct. It's simply not fair on everyone else, or the manager.

If they're taking exception to everything said to them it becomes a bit vexatious. Might be that some sort of mediation is needed but the manager shouldn't be expected to suck it up because mental health issues. What you describe sounds like bullying tbh.

No it's not acceptable.

You need to make reasonable adjustments and work out coping strategies.

I would say that if they are incapable as a result of their disability, of sending appropriate emails, then the reasonable adjustments is to stop sending emails and have more frequent face to face discussions.

So I would schedule a 15 min beginning of day and end of day check in. Might taper off to less frequent as issues get addressed but that's where I would start.

I would encourage across the board that short conference calls/huddles are used to address group discussions rather than sending group email chains back and forth that get heated. It's usually more effective to talk about a subject for 10 mins than email about it for a day.