Colleague with mental health issues

[Stickstack]

Can I just right up front that I’m not knocking people with mental health issues in any way and I think it’s right that employers support people in that situation.

I’m trying to understand at what point the needs/feelings of other employees is taken into consideration when making adjustments for a colleague with mental health issues.

I work with someone who has what appears to be fairly serious mental health problems. I don’t know what they are and I don’t need to know, but she has been open about it and the fact she is on medication. Adjustments have presumably been made for her - again, I don’t know the ins and outs of this and don’t need to. It’s more the impact her behaviour has on the rest of the team.

Her illness appears to be poorly managed, she has said that she regularly goes off her medication for periods of time which results in breakdowns. There have also been numerous unprovoked blow-ups by her towards other staff, instances where she singles someone out and basically harasses them by making repeated complaints about them to managers, photographs them without their consent, inappropriate phone calls outside of working hours, accusations of wrongdoing etc. There are many other examples which I won’t go into but suffice to say, it’s left all of us feeling very on edge because we never know what she will do next. Some of us have tried talking to her directly but she is not receptive to this and threatens getting her union rep onto us or reporting us to the police.

We have approached managers on several occasions to report some of the worst behaviour but their attitude appears to be ‘it’s just her mental health’ and we seem to be expected to put up with it. I do have sympathy for her because it can’t be pleasant for her but the impact on everyone else is becoming intolerable.

If anyone with knowledge of mental health in the workplace has any advice on how we deal with this it would be really helpful.

nhs ?

You all report every single incident in writing . Mental health isn't an excuse to abuse colleagues and your work place has a duty of care towards all of you , not just her. Your work place are probably treading on eggshells in case of a disability discrimination claim but that's not your problem.

The short answer is that it can get very complicated.

The long answer is that while employers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments for her they also need to manage the broader situation which it doesn't sound like they are doing.

Basically in an ideal world any reasonable adjustments they make for her would not negatively impact on you.

You shouldn't try and address either her reasonable adjustments or her behaviour with her. Firstly it almost certainly won't help and will make things worse and secondly it's the job of your manager to do this.

What you (as a team can do).

Block her on your personal phones so she can't contact you outside of work (unless you have a culture of contacting people outside work? Some companies do)

If she "blows up" at someone and this behaviour isn't common at your workplace (and again, I have worked at places where the big boss routinely shouted at people and reduced them to tears etc) then put in a complaint about it.

Thank you @romdowa and @Octavia64, that’s really helpful. I definitely think management are on eggshells around her. She’s raised several grievances before and seems to relish tying managers up with multiple trivial complaints (‘Stick didn’t put paper in the photocopier’) while telling us that we can’t say anything about her because of her mental health.

It’s hard to know how much of this is her personality and how much is down to her mental health, which is why some of us tried to approach her to say that the outbursts and picking on people is not OK but we will avoid that in future.

Watching as we’ve got similar issues in our workplace. It’s very difficult I think. There’s a fine line that employers tread between being understanding/supportive of people’s mental heath challenges and but also them not impacting on others. I confess I’m now much less compassionate when it’s me who ends up picking up the slack :(

How long has she been there?

A long time, at least 10 years as far as I know.

You may well find a lot of this is her personality.

I've worked with people like that who don't have mental health issues.

Mostly people stay away as much as possible and/or change jobs.

They're the kind of people who get through six PAs a year.

You walk away when she starts shoutingn
Block her number
Report everything to management and hr
Do you have occupational health department, they can intervene
Are you in a union, they can advise
Your employer has a duty of care to all the staff and need to keep everyone safe and free from false accusations and bullying

Agree with this.

Your employer is failing in their duty of care to you. You are employed to do a job, not to be subjected to all the things you've outlined. Keep a diary of everything.

Speak to your union if you're in one. Call a meeting with your manager and ask them what steps they're taking to protect you. Don't get drawn in to discussing the colleagues problems/needs, she's not your problem. Keep it about you

If you have a union, inform them of the abuse, inappropriate contact and anything else. Workplace adjustments etc are nobody else's concern but also should not dissuade you from complaining, logging and calling out behaviour that contravenes your T&C's. It's the managements responsibility to do this.

Tread very carefully. We had this, they are still causing stress to staff eve though they left a long time ago.

Similar that management wouldn't do anything while they were here, then a grievance was made by the staff member over a year after they had left about staff, that was untrue, but the staff were disciplined anyway.

It has been awful.

What a bizarre rant.

Normal, "well", people do not behave like this. "Unhinged"... well yes. What on earth do you think "unhinged" is if not a consequence of disordered mental state?

"mental health woke cop out bollocks". 🙄

Block her, walk away from all confrontations and report EVERYTHING. Have all your colleagues report what they’ve seen too. Management is failing this whole team massively. The workplace must be very stressful for you right now OP.

I had a colleague with diagnosed BPD who struggled immensely. She had a terrible time of it, had been sectioned after suicide attempts and was prone to addiction (of anything - pills, drink, eating, shopping) and severe depression. She was a good colleague and a good person. She sometimes got signed off for weeks at a time but management handled it well and nobody else was ever burdened. When she was in work she was a great worker and team player. She was polite and kind and honest. She never harassed people or anything like you describe. Your management need to step up if they want to keep their employees.

Tell your manager, her behaviour is having a detrimental effect on the whole teams MH and you want some adjustments made.

Thank you, this is all really helpful. I was worried about posting because I didn’t want it to come across that I was just bitching about people with mental health problems.

@loropianalover It really is stressful. I was talking about it with DH today and I realised that every time I’m going in when I know she’ll be there it makes me feel tense.

I think I’m going to have a discussion with one of the managers about it and try to get across how much it’s impacting the rest of the team.

Just to update this, there has been another incident which I’ve now raised with our manager. Without going into too much detail, colleague found out something about some extra projects I do and has for some reason taken massive offence at it. She’s been going round the office ranting at anyone who will listen that I’m ‘stealing’ (!) from my colleagues.

I’ve made it very clear to manager that I’m not going to accept it and I want to discuss this and other incidents in person next week. Several other people have also said they’re fed up and want to discuss it with manager. Fingers crossed.