Working together pays dividends for Joanne and her employer

Opening up about your mental health problems to work colleagues can prove to be a very daunting prospect. Here, nurse explains how she broached the subject with her employer

Joanne Swidenbank is a research nurse who lives by the sea with her husband, dog and two cats. She also has bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is a mental health problem that mainly affects your mood. It can vary a great deal in nature and severity between people.

People with bipolar disorder have problems with their moods, experiencing extreme highs and lows.

If you have bipolar disorder you will experience periods or “episodes” of highs known as mania or hypomania and, usually, periods of depression.

Jo, 33, said: “I’ve worn a few diagnostic labels since I was a teenager: depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, borderline personality disorder and, more recently, bipolar disorder.”

The Vale of Glamorgan resident first received support with her mental health when she was 16 years old. This was also when she started working.

“I was doing my A-levels at the time, and I got my first part-time job in the Co-op. I had begun to selfharm and had started smoking a few years earlier, at 13.

“I have been in some form of employment pretty much the whole of my adult life. There were three years where I did my nurse training, which often felt like having a full-time job.

“During this training I accessed university counselling services as I was struggling badly with my moods.

“This was when I first identified that exhaustion and night shift work were some of my triggers.”

However, it wasn’t until Jo began to work full-time, when she was 21, that her mental health started to cause her problems at work.

“I was working in an office-based civil service job, and I ended up taking a period of long-term sickness due to my mental health.

“I struggled at this point in my life to articulate how I felt, and I never once confided in my manager or colleagues.

“As a result of this, I impulsively decided to leave that job and become a nurse instead, as you do.

“Fast forward 10 years to the present day, and my current job. I’m a registered nurse and I work within a clinical specialty.”

In 2016 Jo experienced a marked and rapid deterioration in her mental health and she found she was struggling to cope.

“My sleeping pattern had gone out of the window and I had swung into a deep depression.

“I emailed my manager and asked if I could speak to her in private, and it was like the floodgates just opened and it all just came rushing out.

“I told her everything that had happened over the years, and about my diagnosis.”

As she hadn’t been in her job for long, Jo felt ashamed and guilty.

“I just felt like such a failure. But my manager was wonderful: she comforted me, and made sure that I knew that my welfare and taking the time needed to get better was the priority.”

Jo was off work for three months in total.

“During my absence, my manager kept in touch with me via text message, which I really appreciated, as I often found it impossible to talk on the telephone.

“She would keep me updated on developments at work, which I liked because I felt ‘in the loop’ about what was going on, and when I was ready to go back it helped that I wasn’t suddenly overwhelmed with three months’ worth of information to digest.”

People experiencing mental health problems can – and do – stay and perform well at work, when they receive the right support.

It is important to remember you should not be treated badly at work because of your mental health condition.

In the UK the law states that employers and others should not discriminate.

Jo had several appointments with her occupational health team in order to put a plan in place to support her.

“Between my occupational health nurse, my manager and myself, we devised a plan of reasonable adjustments to help me at work.

“These include things like taking additional short ‘reset breaks’ when I’m feeling stressed, and adjusting my working time, with earlier starts and finishes to allow me to spend more time with my husband, who is my main source of support.

“We also have a ‘catch up’ session together each week, usually over a coffee, where we talk about how I’m feeling, which I find really helpful.”

There is no right or wrong time to have a discussion about your mental health at work.

Some people wait until they are established in a workplace, while others either want or need to discuss it straight after a job offer.

A large part of whether people choose to disclose depends on how they feel about their relationship with their line manager.

“I haven’t always been ‘out’ about my mental health problems – in fact, this is the first job where my manager and immediate colleagues have even known about them.

“I have found their support invaluable, and with some tweaks to my working pattern I am better able to manage my mental health at work.

“I’ve been back for eight months now, and I’m doing well. I still get bad days, sometimes bad weeks too. By