PhD tagged posts

Tips for seeking ADA accommodations
Mark Siegert, PhD

If you are struggling with a mental health issue, you may be inclined to hide your condition from your co-workers or employer; and you might worry that sharing behavioral health information could alienate you from your peers and that it might damage your career.

While these considerations are serious, there is a comforting piece of reality you should know: many of your co-workers are also struggling. Recent research suggests that at any given time, 20 to 25 percent of the workforce has a diagnosable mental health condition and 18 percent has an active substance abuse problem. That means that right now, one out of every four or five employees has a mental health issue. Picture your co-workers in a room. Yes, on average, at least one out of every five has, or if diagnosed would have, a mental health diagnosis.

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Donna Holland Barnes, PhD
President/Co-Founder, National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide
Howard University, Department of Psychiatry

Now is a frustrating time to be working in suicide prevention. While death rates for the other leading causes of death are mostly decreasing or holding steady, death rates for suicide continue to climb. In 2000, the U.S. suicide rate was 10.4 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By 2011, the rate had climbed to 12.3 deaths per 100,000 people. Suicide rates among middle-age adults rose at an even higher rate, jumping nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2010, according to the CDC.

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