I've had both good and bad experiences with disclosure. Normally I'm pretty open about my mental health history and addiction history, beause I just find it easier to be open, plus I believe people have to be willing to talk about their experiences if we're ever going to change the stigma surrounding mental health and addictions.

I was totally open about my mental health issues at Pearson - everybody knew. It made it easier for me, to take time off for psychiatrist appointments and if I had a bad reaction to a med change I could just call in and say look I'm having a bad reaction. But I'd also been with the company for 10 years and had always been a top performer so I was protected to an extent by that. About the only downside was that I became the go to person for anyone in the company with mental health issues or with a family member with mental health issues. Don't know why they all came to me instead of calling the EAP but anyway - so I just started keeping a list of referral numbers at my desk.

At Biotronik I was open about my mental health issues and addiction issues mainly because I was working this really screwy flex time schedule that allowed me to attend support groups and therapy and pdoc appointments. But I was only open with my boss - nobobdy else in the company knew why I was working a screwy schedule, they thought it had something to do with my music lessons as they all knew I'm a harpist. It turned out to be useful that I'd been honest with her from the start because I relapsed pretty badly and had to repeat rehab, and we worked out a schedule of me working part time which allowed me to do rehab and still have some income coming in. New management came in that hated the fact that I worked flex time, purely on principle, and they eventually fired both my boss and me. I was just as happy to be let go, although it was stressfull, becuase I didn't like the new management.

At my last job, which was at a major hospital, disclosure was an unmitigated disaster. I was forced to disclose everything to occupational health via a questionnaire, that was totally illegal, but who wants to tell their employer that what they're doing is illegal on the first day. For the first 3 weeks on the job, everything was fine, I was getting positive feedback as well as the normal new job constructive criticism. Then we had an all day finance dept meeting and part of it was playing a get to know you game over lunch. People would pull questions out of a bag and ask them of anyone around the table. I got asked the question "If you could win any award, what would it be and why." Idiot me should have said the grammy's or something like that, but no I didn't think, and answered honestly. I said I'd like to win CAMH's (major psych hospital) courage to come back award, because I've overcome both mental health and addiction issues. Dead silence. Then someone very quickly changed the topic. A week later, my boss expresssed "concern" that I was a poor fit for 60% of the job. He then gave me a one month written performance appraisal that was the worst I've ever received in 20 years of working, and they threw everything they could into - including stuff that wasn't even true, it was obvious that they were trying to fire me. After that it was nothing but negative feedback about how I wasn't performing, but whenever I asked for specific feedback it was all very nebulous stuff like, "you're not showing enough interest in the clinical programs", "you're awkward in meetings", "you're slow in meetings". They never went after me on technical skills it was always vague interpersonal stuff. 10 days after I got the written performance review I was dismissed as not meeting expectations. This experience has left me very leary of ever disclosing to an employer ever again.

--splitimage