This reminds me of something. I was the director of student services for a college and we were interviewing to hire a new student advisor. The candidate we choose had actually disclosed his battle with PTSD in the interview. To our credit (I include myself because I was still in denial about my own illness and if asked at the time would probably say mental illness was a personality weakness to be overcome) we didn't hold that against him. Based on the rest of the interview and his resume we picking him for the job. Some on the committee actually thought his experience with PTSD would be an asset because many of our students had suffered significant trauma in their lives and he would be well equipped to relate.

Interestingly there were times when we did need to make accommodation to manage the stressfulness of a situation for him. The work environment at times could be very stressful and the pressure to deal with conflict was constant. Because he had disclosed early it was made easier for him to ask for accommodation when things started to get a little overwhelming for him. In fact in my orientation with him we had discussed possible scenerios where he thought he might need accommodation that our collaborative model of operation might not already be accommodating enough. As such I was able to describe his job in a way that would allow us to transfer cases or to increase the involvement of others to assist him with cases without it being preceived as him not performing his job.

I find that often times what is considered an accommodation for someone with a specified need is in fact an accommodation that should be made for all employees. Rather then it being preceived as an accommodation it should be seen as normal operating procedure. Accommodation for me says healthy work environment.

I am a strong advocate of 'wellness days' and 'wellness policies' that accommodate good mental health practices in general. Workplaces should not be pressure cookers that are inflexible to the needs of its workers. The more an organization views its employees as partners and human assets instead of worker-bees and machines the healthier the organization and the more productive, effective and profitable the organization can be.