Mental Illness in the Workplace: An Interdisciplinary Review and Organizational Research Agenda

Abstract

Given the prevalence of and consequences associated with mental illness in the workplace, we believe this review is both critical and timely for researchers and practitioners. This systematic review broadens the extant literature in both theoretical and practical ways in an effort to help lay a foundation for the organizational scholarship of employees with mental illness, a group that has traditionally been underrepresented in the management and industrial-organizational psychology literatures. After defining and conceptualizing mental illness as a social identity, we systematically review the existing empirical research on employees with mental illness across multiple fields of study. Using research that accounts for individual, other, and organizational perspectives, we present a model that outlines the performance, employment, career, and discriminatory outcomes that characterize the experiences of individuals with mental illness as well as individual and organizational strategies that moderate the relationship between having a mental illness and experiencing those outcomes. Together, this article provides a synthesis of what is known about employees with mental illness while also highlighting avenues for future scholarly attention.

Impact of moral injury on the lives of UK military veterans: a pilot study

“…Such occupational difficulties are not uncommon for individuals experiencing a variety of mental health difficulties (e.g. PTSD, [17], but, to our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to delineate a relationship between distress following moral injury and difficulties in employment. This finding has potentially important implications as being in employment is ordinarily supportive of an individual's mental health and occupational difficulties may well act as a maintaining factor for morally injured veterans with mental health problems [18].…”

The Impact of a Change in Employment on Three Work-Related Diseases: A Retrospective Longitudinal Study of 10,530 Belgian Employees

“…The lack of association between a change in employment and being on medication for NPD could be due to the social stigma and consequent under-reporting of disease [ 31 ]. This implies a structural discrimination in workplace settings since individuals with mental illness tend to have reduced access to quality jobs and they are less likely to be perceived as being suitable for promotion [ 32 ]. While, it is likely that people with mental health issues may change their employment, in order to reduce workload, stress and responsibility, the opposite is not necessarily true.…”

Shifting From WellnessatWork to WellnessinWork: Interrogating the Link Between Stress and Organization While Theorizing a Move Toward Wellness-in-Practice

“…Residents in our study discussed utilization of social and physical wellness resources far more than psychological and spiritual wellness activities. Indeed, we noticed a “want to” versus a “need to” divide in the data between occasionally used and as-needed WWP resources, as the vast majority of psychological and spiritual wellness tools fell in the as-needed category and were described as available “if things got bad enough.” As the stigmatization of mental illness is a harsh reality across industries (Follmer & Jones, 2018), wellness-in-practice is an opportunity to break stigmatization barriers and make all dimensions of wellness accessible to employees.…”