Twitter today pointed out this horrific, unbelievably offensive article, titled 'Homeopathy for Domestic Violence and Abuse'. Hopefully, the title alone will be enough to fill you with materialist outrage, but I'm going to have a little rant about it anyway.
Trigger warning: domestic abuse
Good blog.
Unbelievable! I have always hated these homoeopathy wankers, hopefully this will even make some stupid hippies think twice about them.
(On the article, I would remove the bit saying "gives HR and occupational health departments ever more reasons to sack people" - or at least, I disagree with it, as having a diagnosis of illness cannot be a reason to be sacked, if anything getting a diagnosis can help protect you in terms of being covered by the equality act on the basis of disability. They can sack you if your performance is too poor, or if you are off sick too much, even if it is purely due to your disability, as long as they have acted "reasonably" and made reasonable adjustments)
Oh dear god. I have just read Binal Masters article, and I can only imagine that she has absolutely NO experience of an abusive relationship. She says 'In order to stay grounded after a trauma, it helps to have a structured schedule to follow. Try to stick to a daily routine, with regular times for waking, sleeping, eating, working, and exercise. Make sure to schedule time for relaxing and social activities, too.'
Then presumably you will feel so much better when your abusive partner wakes you up repeatedly throughout the night, makes you leave your job every year, prevents you from spending any money on yourself or making any friends, or keep in contact with your relatives. Lets not even bother going into any physical abuse.
Binal Masters is living on another (Utopian) planet, surely? But worst of all, she is inferring that the victim of abuse can manage their abuse by taking some kind of medicine!!! WTF??! I feel outraged. Does she actually KNOW any abused people? How are they going to get to a Homeopathic doctor without their partner finding out. Oh there are so many things about this article that are just ludicrous! Well-blogged, Ramona!
Also - I loved the footnotes!
Ramona - nice article. Those are the best footnotes of all time.
Steven - that's true in the UK but not worldwide, and medicalisation isn't limited to our shores.
Great article!
Thanks, Ramona. Tana Dineen's worth reading: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Manufacturing-Victims-Psychology-Industry-self-help/dp/0094797900/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327050687&sr=1-1
And of course, David Smail: http://www.davidsmail.info/introfra.htm
I meant to say first I thought this was a great blog!
lzbl
lzbl, I would be very surprised if any countries where there was such medicalisation of problems were the same countries in which people could just be sacked for being diagnosed with a particular medical condition. If you can point out counterexamples to this I will of course reassess my statement.
In fact, going off on a slight tangent, while of course I think this constant medicalisation of social problems is in general a negative, in terms of a workplace setting it can be quite useful for workers to improve their situation at work/their job security, as I mentioned above in terms of management having to make "reasonable adjustments"
Ok but how about being diagnosed with stuff and this preventing you from being hired in the first place? Obv it's illegal here not to hire someone cos they're disabled, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen in practice.
Also, thanks!
Pre-employment health questionnaires are now illegal, so I'm not really sure how they would know unless you told them in the interview, which I'm sure most people wouldn't!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that disabled workers don't get discriminated against - I would say we are probably the most discriminated against group of workers (mostly because our work can be affected by our conditions in a way that people's gender/skin colour does not). But of course someone who has developed a mental illness like depression following being a victim of domestic violence can be fired for being depressed without a medical diagnosis - and getting a medical diagnosis in this instance would be at least partly helpful for the worker as it would show that they have a protected characteristic requiring reasonable adjustments to be made and banning discrimination. Which of course they could still try to do but it is made a bit more difficult for them.
edited to add: of course if someone has a visible disability it's going to make them less likely to get hired in most situations
Steven., i wonder how much what you're saying is skewed towards the highly unionised public sector? It's certainly unlawful to discriminate on health grounds (well, if reasonable adjustments aren't made etc), but it happens all the time. In my old job someone was off for a bit with stress (depression) and got sacked on their first day back. We recently had someone approach Brighton SF after they were being bullied out of their job, in part involving a lack of reasonable adjustments for dyslexia. So I suspect it is quite common in more casual/private sector work, particularly for mental health, which imho management often sneer at as 'not real', 'lack of ambition', 'faking' and the like.
Steven.
How recent is this? I haven't seen it recently, but as of a couple of years ago I definitely had application forms that wanted to know how many sick days i'd taken, some asking why.
Joseph Kay
now, I may be being a bit defensive here, but I am getting a bit fed up of people on here saying this to me. Yes, I work in the public sector, but as people should be aware, the "public sector" is now highly fragmented, with large parts of the workforce actually being highly casualised and precarious subcontracted workers in the private and voluntary sectors. Even if this weren't the case, I don't live in a bubble and I'm aware of the situation in other sectors .
to be honest, most of the individuals I end up representing who get in trouble are disabled, and of course I'm disabled myself so I'm well aware of the difficult situation we are in as I stated above. I am in perpetual fear of losing my job, as I know that when I lose this one I will find it very difficult to get another job, because of my disability.
Now, it's quite possible I would have had useful advice for your colleagues, as I have had a lot of success in individual cases getting really significant reasonable adjustments agreed for people by reluctant employers (including things like reduced working hours, reduced workload, specialist equipment purchased, flexible working hours, etc which really pissed off management). People can get sacked for being off sick or for poor performance, but if they have a disability like depression or dyslexia management have to be able to show they made reasonable adjustments first -which if they didn't do you would have a good case for disability discrimination and unfair dismissal.
But anyway, the examples you outline do not contradict what I have said in any way. What I said was that employers cannot use diagnoses of illness to sack workers. Although of course they can - and do - use the symptoms to do so.
the equality act came in in April 2010.
Woah, ok. All I'm getting at is the fact something is against the law is not the same as it not happening, and that I suspect employment law is more frequently flouted where unionisation is lower. I mean a large part of day-to-day union work is holding employers to their legal obligations right?
I thought it was going to really be "homeopathic"--like having your partner hit you with boxing gloves on, role-playing where you knock each other around a little, or maybe developing calluses so the stick doesn't hurt as much. THAT would be homeopathic. That would also be appalling, but too ridiculous not to be funny.
Joseph Kay
sorry mate, went a bit over the top, mostly because of things people who aren't you have previously said.
both of these are correct - and they don't contradict what I was saying, which was in response to a bit of the article which was subsequently removed, so maybe if you missed that that's why you appeared to be thinking you are disagreeing with me.
In a way, yes, but in another way their legal "obligations" are usually very minimal (or non-existent other than in a cosmetic way), so it's trying to argue that there is in fact a higher level of obligation. On a general note this is something which you don't necessarily need a union for - a savvy individual who knew where to look could do just as well in some situations.
Joseph Kay
In a way, yes, but in another way their legal "obligations" are usually very minimal (or non-existent other than in a cosmetic way), so it's trying to argue that there is in fact a higher level of obligation. On a general note this is something which you don't necessarily need a union for - a savvy individual who knew where to look could do just as well in some situations.
That employers try to sack (and often succeed in sacking) people because of 'disability' or 'illness' is undoubtedly true (I think we would all agree). That a strong union presence makes that more difficult is almost certainly also true. The question with regards medicalisation, however, is surely: is an employer more likely to sack (or try to sack) an employee who is diagnosed as ill compared to one who is otherwise in the same situation (has the same 'illness') but not diagnosed as such?
Where the 'symptoms' are noticeable to the employer they may well be used as an excuse to sack someone, but is there evidence that the diagnosis makes disciplinary action more likely? And moreover is it sufficiently more likely to overcome the additional legal protection that the diagnosis affords (which admittedly may not be known about or defended, particularly in a non-unionised workplace)?
Alasdair
this is going off at a bit of a tangent from the blog still, but I'll respond for hopefully the last time. I'm not aware of any evidence that diagnosis makes punitive action more likely - in my experience at least it is just the opposite. I.e. that management start out down the route of performance management leading to dismissal, then I say "know this person has a disability, you need to make reasonable adjustments".
Secondly, apart from my experience, employers may be dicks, but they are at least mostly rational dicks. If someone keeps getting into work late and frequently going off sick and missing deadlines (because they have depression) their problem is going to be mostly with the behaviour which is from their point of view slowing production. Not with the name of whatever condition they are suffering
Excellent blog, Ramona.
Revol,
The trouble with getting a diagnosis like depression is not the current job, it's the next one. I know that employers are not meant to legally discriminate, but all it takes is even a hint of depression and they'll be employing someone else. Recruitment in even private companies that adhere to the law can be pretty brutal - checking out peoples Facebook or other profiles etc.
Regards,
Martin
martinh
how would employers at your next job know about your condition?
Revol's post above is bang on, and contains a couple of points I thought about making but didn't in the interest of time-saving
Steven.
fair enough. although now i know your weakness, mwahahahaha :bb:
Steven.
True and true. Tbh when i've read through employment law it's often really vague (what is 'reasonable'? etc), with the details filled in by case law. If you can grab a few favourable looking cases and the employer hasn't doesn't done their homework, i'd imagine it would be possible to get over and above the legal minimum with a bit of bluffing and bluster. This isn't something I have much experience of, but we've lent LRD material to workers in Brighton, who've used it to write letters to their employers with varying degrees of success.
In terms getting back on topic, with the medicalisation thing i suspect an actual diagnosis does put you in a better position than just turning up late or absenteeism or whatever. But yeah, this is also about the neoliberal individualisation of grievances, 'management by stress' etc. Mark Fisher has talked about 'the privatisation of stress', which is a nice turn of phrase.
Yeah I'm not trying to deny that having a diagnosis can be helpful for workers in individual cases at all, obviously it is. But generally it's about the individualisation of issues that are symptomatic of wider social problems like Joseph said.
Sorry to continue the tangent (can split off if you want), but
Steven.
I've definitely had to answer health questionnaires as part of the application process more recently than that. In the interests of balance, one was a public sector employer. ;) Either way, I've always assumed that part of the reference from a previous employer relates to sickness absence.
Right now I'm working somewhere where I don't get sick pay and in fact slip down the pecking order in the event of sickness. One of my colleagues texted in sick last week only to be bullied into coming in anyway by the boss. She told me she was more worried about losing face (ie future work prospects) than the money for the day itself. On a related note, another boss has spent the week complaining about how an overseas agent sent him a (young) student with cerebral palsy, claiming "he doesn't belong here".
In a situation like this, I find it absolutely inconceivable to make any sort of disclosure related to mental health to my current employer. It would frankly be the worst possible thing I could do (and yes, I have missed work in the past due to mental health problems).
Aye. I've avoided having "being mental" or even "stress" appear on my sickness absence records so far, not least because it can fuck up your chances of getting a mortgage down the line (HSBC certainly include depression on their list of notifiable medical conditions), or a loan & stuff like that.
Steven.
I have to declare having a disability when applying for jobs because I know it will impact on my ability to perform the role at times and if I don't declare it (bearing in mind it has been diagnosed and treated for a number of years) my protection under the Equality Act is a bit wobbly.
I've had managers tell me they 'wouldn't employ someone like me in their team' in the past so have no doubt that declaring that has an effect on me getting a job.
lzbl
no way would I advise anyone to disclose it before you have been offered the job. Wait till you have been offered it in writing (or better yet, started it), then declare it. Nominally, the law is meant to protect you but in most cases it can't - and certainly it can't if you haven't even started the job. If you tried to take them to a tribunal for saying that they didn't offer you the job because of your disability, they would just say "no we didn't, we didn't offer it because of whatever other reason instead".