Taming the black dog of depression
The NSW Police Force has moved to address the growing issue of work stress among its staff by educating senior officers on how to assess the mental health of employees.
The initiative follows several recent suicide attempts. Seven police officers have committed suicide since 2001.
The senior officer training program has been developed by Professor Vijaya Manicavasagar, director of psychological services at Randwick's Black Dog Institute - which aims to improve understanding, diagnosis and treatment of mood disorders.
"We've been in negotiations with the police since the beginning of this year - we ran a pilot program and are [now] rolling it out to the senior police,'' Manicavasagar, a clinical psychologist, says.
"Commissioner Ken Moroney has a lot of foresight - he's quite a visionary when it comes to mental-health issues and police recognise that ... mental health problems among officers is a problem.''
Dr Christine Bennett, chairwoman of the MBF Foundation steering committee, says helping people with depression deal with their illness in a confidential, supportive and real-time environment without fear of embarrassment, loss of anonymity or risk to employment, will ensure the workplace is secure and productive for everyone.
"Depression affects an estimated 20 per cent of Australians and accounts for more than six million days of reduced productivity each year, with serious implications for work safety,'' says Bennett.
Terry Houguet-Pincham, the general manager of depressioNet, says depression is often poorly managed at work - a manager suggesting a depressed employee take a holiday can actually make the situation worse by lowering their self-esteem and taking them away from what is generally a productive, team-focused activity.
"With Working Well, employers will be able to better understand workers with depression and deploy the right strategies to secure the best outcome for the individual, their colleagues and the organisation,'' he says.
Some organisations - including banks, accounting firms, media companies and government departments - already avail their staff of in-house or off-site psychological services.
Accounting giant KPMG has joined forces with employee assistance program provider OSA Group, which has a nationwide network of several hundred psychologists and social workers. Dean Chesterman, KPMG's HR manager for employee relations and policy, says OSA helps staff identify, explore and resolve everyday problems. He says issues commonly presented in counselling include emotional stress, marital or relationship problems, substance abuse, gambling, financial worries, parenting troubles, poor health, workplace issues, and anxiety and depression. "KMPG and OSA Group are ... providing a framework in which managers and employees can acknowledge and address these problems pro-actively, confidentially and expeditiously,'' he says.
Manicavasagar, who also works as a private practitioner, has treated a number of teachers as well as police officers. "Psychologists are more available to people since November last year because we're now in Medicare,'' she says. "So you can access a psychologist with a referral from a GP.''
She says "high-risk'' industries such as defence or banking often offer psychological services to staff. "If there are robberies, banks outsource counselling to a company that deals specifically with trauma,'' she says, adding that mental health problems are not exclusive to high risk industries. "In [these] industries, you're generally dealing with trauma and not all mental health problems are trauma-related.
"Anxiety and depression are some of the most common mental health problems - up to 25 per cent of people sitting in a GP's surgery might be suffering from an anxiety or depressive disorder but it's unrecognised.
"The problem is where you develop an anxiety problem and get bogged down at work, performance starts to decrease and the boss reprimands you -- so it snowballs.''
Anxiety and depression are among the most common mental health problems experienced by people at work. "There's a smattering of disorders that people might have but they tend to be rarer and some industries where there are risks involved you'd get a weighting towards the trauma-type reactions,'' says Vijaya Manicavasagar from the Black Dog Institute.
The Randwick organisation aims to improve understanding, diagnosis and treatment of mood disorders. If you think you might be suffering from anxiety or depression, warning signs include:
* Excessive ruminating - thoughts may be going around in your head or you may be playing out catastrophic/negative scenarios and not finding solutions to your problems;
* Avoidance - you might usually speak up at meetings but you've become quiet and withdrawn, or maybe you hide in your office rather than socialising;
* Insomnia - your work might start to deteriorate as you become more tired;
* Drinking and drug abuse - these problems can come into the workplace.
If you suspect you might be suffering from a mental health problem - maybe you're not sleeping properly, have a poor appetite or can't seem to get motivated at work - a GP or occupational psychologist can help.
"Your GP really is first port of call for an assessment [or] referral to another professional - or sometimes the GP themselves might be able to assist,'' says Manicavasagar, director of psychological services at the Black Dog Institute, which is attached to the Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick and affiliated with the University of NSW.
"A lot of workplaces also have their own [often outsourced] psychological services, for example, banks and the police, so workers have the option to contact those as well,'' says Manicavasagar. "If someone is saying they're not sleeping well, not eating, not motivated. Those [are] very common [things] people talk about and I'd say go for an assessment.''
By Jennifer Loicht, The Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2007
