Posted by mair on July 31, 2002, at 17:33:15
I need a reality check.
One of my colleagues has a secretary who suffered a breakdown, and slipped into a depression that rendered her pretty non-functional. This happened about 5 or 6 weeks ago and since then, her only communications to us have been that she can't work now and doesn't know when or if she will be able to return to work. We slide along very poorly with a series of very inadequate temps and finally my colleague, in some desperation, contacts his secretary and tells her that he's got to find someone to replace her. She writes us back that the timing of this letter was unfortunate, because she was just starting to feel that she could start to work again on a very parttime basis and build up over a period of weeks to almost fulltime. We meet with her and ask her for a very honest assessment of how prepared she is to come back to work. Of course she doesn't know. She can tell us that she still gets very depressed some days, suffers from pretty severe anxiety, and that she isn't sleeping and that although she now functions much better than before, the ADs she's been taking aren't working adequately and she is going to explore with her pdoc switching to a different AD. She also tells us that she likes her job and would like to come back, although not at the expense of her mental health.
My colleague feels very guilty because this is someone who has worked for him for 4 years. He asks me what I think about having her come back to work. My inclination is to tell him that I don't think it's a good idea because: 1) its a very stressful job which requires a full-time person; 2) it's a long commute for this person who is a single mother and she probably would be much better off with a job closer to where she lives; 3) She is very skilled in an area where there is a severe shortage of competent people so I know she is eminently employable, although maybe not at as much money as we were paying her; 4) in spite of this woman's basic competence, my colleague had job performance issues with her before the depression - I can't imagine that improving post-depression; 5) Her meds profile tells me that we have no way of really knowing whether she's going to find a mix very quickly that will enable her to work at more or less full steam; 6) my own history tells me that this woman is at the beginning of dealing with this illness and it's going to be a long and difficult road which may or may not result in her being able to handle this job, and 7) if she isn't really able to do her job fully and consistently, it will place an enormous burden on the remainder of our staff - her absence has already taken its toll on them.
When I first got depressed, my colleagues were not particularly sympathetic or accommodating although truthfully I never really clued them in to what was happening with me - they just knew that my production was way off. I resented the way I've been treated, but the reality is that there is no question but that my depression affected my work performance greatly even after I started getting alot better.
I of all people feel that i should know how to deal with this situation and make every attempt to be as accommodating as possible. I don't want to make this person feel worse when she's trying so hard to get better. I feel like a traitor for taking the position that I've taken. But I also think I'm right about this employee's ability to work effectively at this job.
Does it sound like I'm projecting too much of my own experience on this woman, that I'm assuming too much about her situation?
I would love some feedback.
Mair
poster:mair
thread:27701
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020728/msgs/27701.html