Let’s imagine you have a job where you work directly with the public and one day you walk into your boss’ office and tell her that you are having suicidal thoughts. What do you imagine happens next?
Recently, we’ve seen the news about the Germanwings airplane pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who crashed a plane with over 100 people on it into a mountain. Later reports showed that he suffered from depression and had expressed suicidal ideations. Still, he continued to work, and not only that, he continued to work in an industry where he was directly responsible for the safety of other people. Is this “normal?”
Well, whether it’s in line with what your ideas of normal are, it happens. This time, it happened publicly for the world to see the aftermath of the results of what untreated individuals are capable of when they either prematurely interrupt treatment, discontinue maintenance therapy or when their employers have no means of intervening on behalf of mentally unstable adults.So, what are the alternatives?
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How does society balance a person’s right to privacy versus the public’s right to safety? This tends to be the confusing part for most people, therefore I will try to clarify some of the misperceptions about the right to act on behalf of others with suicidal presentations and suicidal intentions.
1. Having suicidal thoughts are very common in people who suffer from depression and other mental health disorders. Someone can have thoughts of harming themselves and never act on it, while others can attempt several times before committing suicide.
2. Having suicidal thoughts is not a good enough reason to make someone take a leave of absence from work or be terminated from employment (actually it’s discriminatory) or hospitalized. A person has to actually have the intention of committing suicide and a plan for suicide in order for mandated reporters, or professionals to intervene.
3. More important, if an employee were to tell his/her boss that they were thinking of harming themselves and they were in direct contact with the public, the employer has a responsibility to probe and in some cases determine if they should call the authorities based on that employee’s plan to harm themselves or others. In several states, like New York, there are laws in place for professionals especially to abide by in case of public threat to safety for suicidal or homicidal risk.
The goals are to keep everyone as safe from harm as possible. It is a thin line to assume that jobs have the right to act on behalf of an employee who may never admit to suicidal thoughts or mental illness and investigating enough about an employee to decide upon how to help them and prevent the public from harm, if the intention and plan are not evident.
Many companies offer an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), a benefits program designed to help employees deal with personal problems that may adversely impact their job performance, health and well-being.
Our job as society should be to make people feel less stigmatized about coming forward with their mental illness and as health professionals, to have better interventions for workers to be supervised and supported in high stress positions.
