The Workplace | The Last Bastion of Mental Health Stigma?

Yesterday saw some stigmatising advice from one of the mental health sector’s leading advocates:

‘If you become mentally ill, don’t – whatever you do – tell your boss. That’s Ruby Wax’s advice.’

Monday’s article on the Guardian contains quotes from Ruby Wax (taken from an interview she gave with the Times), who was recently awarded an OBE encouraging and promoting discussion around mental illness. Ruby’s a spokesperson for mental health charities, and uses her unique humour to tackle the subject in an accessible way. However, she’s decided the workplace is one place where it cannot be discussed:

“When people say, ‘Should you tell them at work?’, I say: ‘Are you crazy?’ You have to lie. If you have someone who is physically ill, they can’t fire you. They can’t fire you for mental health problems but they’ll say it’s for another reason. Just say you have emphysema.” Mental illness, she added, “is like the situation used to be with gay rights. Like being in the closet, but mental illness is now the taboo instead.”

I’m not sure Ruby Wax has even had an employer in the traditional sense, in the past 20 years what with her occupation as an actress and stand-up comedian. And speaking about mental health over the last few years has only re-ignited her career. So she hardly is speaking from any recent experience.
Furthermore, such an opinion is deeply stigmatising and reinforces the notion that we should NOT speak about mental health. It’s a statement that if taken on board could vastly set back the work of stigma reduction, work Ruby has herself been involved in.