![]() Managers and business leaders - many of whom will be carrying their own mental challenges and disorders - are often unaware that they should be looking for disabilities beyond the most evident ones. Especially at work, where people with mental illness may fear a reaction from their employer for appearing “problematic.” ![]() People silence themselves enough on their own. But at that point, I had understood that not being unable to acknowledge my mental disorder was stopping me from actually dealing with it. I didn’t know whether I had the right to pen my personal struggle under the category of a disability, or whether my disorder was “serious” enough to speak out about it. I had a long internal battle before writing my first public acknowledgment of my own invisible disability - an anxiety disorder I’ve had since I was a child, but took me years to identify and put a name to. If you don’t look like your body is struggling, you’re essentially deemed “not disabled enough”. In general society, disability is synonymous to what the world, unfortunately, deems as “handicapped”. The idea of ‘not being disabled enough’ must disappear Here are some ways in which businesses can scrape beyond the surface and embrace invisible disabilities. You’re also holding your company back from having a better product, brand, and culture. ![]() If you’re not shining that light, soon others will shine it on you. It’s a space where disability is only partly defined, and there’s no effort being made to shine a light on all its definitions and nuances.Īlso left in the dark are the support systems that already exist to help those people. Let’s take disabilities out of the gray space they’ve fallen into in business. When invisible conditions aren’t drawn into the general conversation about disabilities and diversity, equity and inclusion (D,E&I), they remain the subject of ignorance and taboo. One in five Americans experience mental illness, meaning that many of the people milling around your co-working space or chatting away on Zoom calls could be living with a disability that you can’t see. The firm recently agreed to compensate the employee, but in 2022, incidents like this shouldn’t be happening in the first place. The CEO told him he “couldn’t be trusted” to perform his work duties. When he tried to return to work six weeks later, he was instead fired. Last year, while battling a major depressive episode, a senior executive at a Georgia manufacturing company took leave to receive treatment in a psychiatric hospital.
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