Reducing the Burdens of Mental Disabilities

Individuals with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities face discrimination when seeking to find -- and keep -- jobs. Employers, who are required to offer accommodations for disabled employees, often find that it is easier than they thought. By Andrew R. McIlvaine People with mental disabilities (including intellectual disabilities, serious mental illnesses and developmental disabilities, such as autism) have an employment rate that is only half as high as people with other forms of disabilities, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. One of the major barriers to employment is a common misperception that people with mental disabilities are less productive and more prone to violence than the general population, says David Hoff, a senior technical assistance specialist at the Institute for Community Inclusion, a Boston-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of people with mental and other disabilities. Every time there's a story in the media about workplace violence, it stokes this misperception that people with mental disabilities are a danger, he says. That's a stereotype; most people with these issues are no more prone to violence than anyone else. The EEOC was concerned enough about discrimination in this area that it held a hearing in mid-March that featured testimony from several people with psychiatric disabilities who suffered from discrimination in the workplace. During the hearing, Donna Malone -- for whom the EEOC won a settlement of $360,000 from her employer after she was terminated while hospitalized due to her disability -- described the way her supervisor said he had a gut feeling that she was a danger and that he had to look out for the safety of his other employees. Malone testified she had a long history of post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder and eating disorders, including anorexia and bulimia. Dr. Gary R. Bond of the Dartmouth Medical School's Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center, also testified, saying that the lack of work among those suffering from mental disabilities inflicts more than just economic hardship. Work is a crucial element in the recovery process, he said. Samuel Bagenstos, principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, testified that work commands respect, and it represents agency, responsibility and independence. Work is the place where people with and without disabilities can come together, share common projects and break down barriers of stereotype and injustice. Companies often incorrectly assume that the Americans with Disabilities Act's reasonable accommodation requirements requires employers to tolerate misconduct and a lack of productivity from workers suffering with a mental disability, says Chris Kuczynski, the EEOC's assistant legal counsel for ADA policy. That's not true, he says. Employers can have uniformly required rules of conduct, so long as they're applied consistently and are job-related. The mentally disabled do require different sorts of accommodations than those with physical disabilities, of course, says Kuczynski. Supervisors may need to alter their management styles by, for example, reinforcing their verbal communications with written instructions or vice versa, or providing extra guidance on assignments and helping an employee break tasks down into more manageable parts, he says. These are all relatively simple things to do, but they're not always well understood by employers, he says. Experts say the EEOC's new regulations for implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act, which were published in the Federal Register on March 25, should lessen the potential bias faced by employees with mental disabilities. Having a mental disability is one of the most-stigmatized conditions out there, says Carol Miaskoff, assistant legal counsel at the EEOC. It's a very major concern in terms of discrimination. Employees and job applicants with mental disabilities, in particular, will now face fewer hurdles in establishing that they are, in fact, disabled, says Corrie Fischel Conway, an employment attorney at Morgan Lewis and Bockius in Washington. The new regulations specifically include a number of mental impairments, such as major depressive disorders, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder as conditions that will virtually always be found to be disabilities, she says. Previously, people suffering from mental and other disabilities often had to go through an extensive individualized analysis to establish that they had a disability in the first place, and only then would they be entitled to a reasonable accommodation, she says. While an individualized analysis is still required, says Conway, the regulations dictate that, with regard to these types of conditions, the analysis should be particularly simple and straightforward. The new regulations dictate that determining whether a major life activity is substantially limited should not demand extensive analysis and that the focus should be on complying with accommodation obligations, not determining whether a disability exists, she says. Therefore, she says, employers should no longer require disabled employees to have their healthcare providers fill out extensive, detailed questionnaires to determine if a disability exists and is covered by the ADA. If you have someone with bipolar disorder, for example, you can ask for documentation that this impairment exists and why an accommodation is needed, if it's not obvious or known by the employer, but asking for detailed medical documentation as to how this type of condition substantially limits a major life activity is likely going too far, she says. 管理新知 您可能感兴趣的文章 跟着总统来读书：奥巴马的最新书单！

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