Geisha Kow­lessar

One in ten peo­ple in the work­place suf­fers from men­tal ill­ness and one of the root caus­es is the at­ti­tude of man­age­ment to­wards work­ers.Mak­ing the state­ments yes­ter­day was Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh, sec­re­tary of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists, who was speak­ing on the top­ic Ad­dress­ing met­al ill­ness­es in the work­place.He spoke at a sem­i­nar at the Em­ploy­ers So­lu­tion Cen­tre, Aranguez.

Deyals­ingh said de­pres­sion in­volved feel­ings of sad­ness, de­spair and help­less­ness.Say­ing men­tal ill­ness had many faces, Deyals­ingh added: "You can have some­one com­ing in­to the work­place look­ing sad and you can have some­one else com­ing in hear­ing voic­es and be­ing para­noid, think­ing their col­leagues are against them and al­ways bad-talk­ing them."

Stress in the work­place was an­oth­er fac­tor which must be close­ly mon­i­tored, as this could not on­ly be trans­mit­ted to the home but could lead to a host of ill­ness­es, such as hy­per­ten­sion."Every­one ex­pe­ri­ences some de­gree of stress, but it is how it af­fects us so­cial­ly, how it af­fects our re­la­tion­ship with our col­leagues, and with those in the home, that we have to look at," De­laysingh said."Stress in the work­place is al­so re­lat­ed to stress in the home...You can­not iso­late one from the oth­er."

He added that oth­er caus­es of de­pres­sion in the work­place could re­sult from the job it­self, work­ing con­di­tions and re­la­tion­ships in that en­vi­ron­ment.To re­duce de­pres­sion in the work­place, Deyals­ingh added, an ac­tion plan was need­ed which must first­ly iden­ti­fy the prob­lem, source the back­ground of the prob­lem and how it was dis­cov­ered and then iden­ti­fy the re­me­di­al ac­tion re­quired and rea­sons for the ac­tion.

Man­agers must al­so be sen­si­tive to is­sues of fe­male em­ploy­ees es­pe­cial­ly when men­stru­at­ing, he said."The boss may have to know dur­ing that time not to give any added as­sign­ments," Deyals­ingh said."We al­so need to ed­u­cate men about this, be­cause a lot of them com­plain that their wives are very grumpy, very ir­ri­ta­ble, and you have to agree with every­thing they say."

The area where some­one lives could al­so lead to de­pres­sion."It is found that peo­ple who have low­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic class may have a high­er risk of de­pres­sion. The en­vi­ron­ment in which we live in would al­so af­fect our men­tal ill­ness," Deyals­ingh added.