Bosses Told To Brush Up On Mental Health Issue

Bosses are ill-equipped to take on staff with mental health problems, it has been claimed. Government efforts to move people off benefit and into work risks failure unless employers get more support to recruit and retain such staff, a Disability Rights Commission spokesman said. A poll of small and medium businesses by GfK NOP for the commission found two thirds had no procedures for managing staff with mental health problems.

The survey also indicated managers were more reluctant to make workplace adjustments for new staff with a condition than they were for existing staff.

Its a wake-up call for the government aiming to get a million incapacity benefit claimants – 40% of them with mental health conditions – back to work.

Bert Massie, DRC chairman said: “We need to recognise that mental ill-health is now a badge of exclusion from the labour market in the way race and gender once were.”