The Productive Pessimist

  Life being stressful isn't  an illness.  That's entirely correct. But "life being stressful" also  isn't acceptable to employers, either. It's not going to be the case, in the UK, in 2025, that if people "just stop going to doctors and claiming mental health issues and getting signed off because life is a bit hard, then we wouldn't be spending so much on welfare!" . "People don't like you" . "You're impacting your colleagues' morale" . "It's unfair of you to make your colleagues worry about you by being clearly upset" . "You can't talk about feeling burnt out when there are people dealing with far higher workloads than you - everyone is burnt out, but we have to keep going" . "If you aren't happy to be here, f-k off and get a different job" . "I'm sick of you coming in here looking like you want to k*ll yourself - why don't you just f-king do it, so the rest ...

  With changes to the UK's welfare provisions making it harder for people facing mental health challenges to get basic financial assistance without  an expectation that they will be pursuing employment, British business can no longer carry on its time-honoured practice of subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) pushing people experiencing mental ill-health out of the workplace, and people trying to manage even complex mental health conditions can no longer assume that they will be allowed to focus on getting to a point of reliable stability before they have to look for work. The burden on people experiencing mental ill-health is cruel, especially for those whose condition is not  "just a normal response to the challenges of life", and is, for example, something like schizophrenia, bipolar, or one of the Cluster B personality disorders , which can be exceptionally disruptive to the individual experiencing the condition, not just those around them. At The Productive Pessimist ...

  What the heck do you  even know about what I'm  going through?! A very good question - there are a lot of people who get their "understanding of mental health challenges" from pop psychology books, or a two-hour online course, no contact with the real world needed. That's not where my understanding comes from. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia following a serious (and violent) psychotic break in 2007.   I've been on high-dose antipsychotics (Lamotrigine and Quetiapine combo - which followed a Risperidone prescription, which turned out to be absolutely disastrous for me.) I've recently been able to transition to benzodiazepines, which I use alongside naturopathic condition management, which in my case includes real-food vitamin profiling and elemental therapy, with journalling as a mindfulness technique. At the moment, my symptoms are primarily slightly disordered thinking, occasional paranoid psychotic thoughts (mostly around helicopters...which...no idea...

  "It's not pie! More for other people doesn't mean less for you!" This was the howl of social media's self-declared #neurodivergence, #disability communities in the late twenty-teens and into the twenty-twenties. It sounded almost convincing, a worthy rallying call that everyone who wanted to be On The Right Side of History should immediately get behind. And if you dared  to hesitate to get behind the statement, if you so much as thought  that it maybe didn't sound quite  right - well, you were privileged , you were guilty of ableism , you just wanted disabled people to not exist!  If you were  disabled yourself, and had some reservations about the pie-ness of inclusion, then you were "everything that's wrong with the world!" But - as so often happens - those who were hesitant have been proved right.  It turns out that, as many disabled people with observable, high-impact impairments, who need  workplace accommodations - and, most importantly, w...

  TW: Mentions of su*c*dal ideation, su*c*de attempts ....................................................................................................... September is Suicide Awareness Month, with next week (Tuesday 10th September) being Suicide Awareness Day. Employers As an employer, you are probably never going to know if any of your team have attempted or considered suicide.  It's not something people are supported or encouraged to talk about in their workplaces.   It's actually still frequently seen as "selfish", as "undermining morale"  as "unfair to management and colleagues" for people to even mention anything more than being a little 'down' or 'anxious' at work. Even in the context of burnout, junior employers frequently get the response, when they try and raise how they're feeling, and seek support, of " Everyone is struggling right now. You need to focus on how you can help your colleagues." If 'ever...