The Workplace:Issues in Mental Health

Prof. Sara Howard
E-mail: sara.howard@alumnae.brynmawr.edu

Mental Health and the Workplace

Course Overview

Political, economic, and legal forces have made mental health an increasing
source of interest and contention in the workplace:

• Liability of employers for the violence or harassment of their employees has
  increased; however, laws have been enacted limiting the extent to which
  employers can ascertain the mental health of potential hires.
  

• Pursuant to the Family & Medical Leave Act, workers are now entitled to leave for their own or their dependent’s serious mental illnesses which employers must be able to identify accurately so as to properly grant or deny such requests.
  

• Psychiatric medicine and psychotherapy have increased the extent to which
  those with mental/emotional disturbances can participate in the workforce (and welfare reform requires it)
  

• Flattened organizational structures technology has made possible make
  increasingly great demands on the emotional resources of workers to manage themselves. Managers must become more interpersonally adept because they supervise more workers than in the past.
  

• At a societal level, over the last quarter of the 20th century, work has
  become an increasingly large determinant of one’s identity and satisfaction in life, for some, replacing family and community. Emotional impediments to success in work are more obvious and detrimental than ever before. Women are starting businesses and entering the professions in greater percentages than men, yet differences in professional self-concept and management style remain conflictual in the work lives of many women.
  

• As the enormous impact of workers’ and leaders’ emotional health on industry is recognized, behavioral and organizational interventions have been developed, among them executive coaching, organizational consulting, and leadership development offer varying degrees of promise.

This course will approach issues of mental health and the workplace from the
individual, organizational, and societal level. The goal of the course is to
inform students about the many ways in which the mental/emotional capacities of workers, and related laws affect individuals and organizations, and will continue to do so with the increasing emphasis on a knowledge-and service-based economy.