Andy Berry, 33, moved from the United States to Britain in 1996 and works in marketing and communications. He has worked for household names such as Shell, the BBC and Microsoft as a project manager. Following a number of mis-diagnoses, he was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
“When I went back to work after I was off, after the diagnosis, I was in a team of seven people and of the seven people four had been off for extended periods with stress. In that regard I had support. However my direct line manager – you could just tell it was like you were stigmatised. You were just kind of looked upon as lower down in their esteem. To me that’s a failure of the company because they should have actually gone ‘okay, what’s wrong with the company that this many people are off?’. I don’t think they took it seriously or if they did I don’t think there was the will to actually address it. I think it was pretty much set in stone that it was a barrier to my career. You know, saying ‘well hopefully he can stick at this job’, those type of comments. ‘Do you think you can handle it?’
What drove me to the diagnosis was the way my role was manged. It was just when the government introduced the flexible working hours. I suddenly saw my hours jump from just over 40 hours to about 55-60 hours a week and finding myself in a situation where I was over-burdened . And then speaking to my boss about it and my boss saying ‘well just get it done, I don’t care’. And there was no end in sight. I just had a situation that was untenable and that created the frustration, the depression. Actually it created a scenario where all the triggers to make me not work well happened.
I think a lot of that is because lots of people who work who are managers are probably not suitable to be managers. They don’t understand how a happy workforce makes for better efficiency and better output. Somebody breaks a leg, you’ll understand that. Somebody has a mental health problem you’ll think oh, he’s crackers. But in fact there’s things we can do to bring people back in to wider society again and into the workplace. And de-stigmatise mental health. Its something that should be tackled. The work environment in the UK has changed in the last 10 years and if it continues to change in the same manner it will become a bigger issue. Longer working hours. Higher demand on staff. Its gotten more Americanised.”
Interview by Mary O’Hara
Source: The Guardian – UK
Counselling Madrid
