Over half would not employ someone with mental illness

A recent survey has suggested that over half of people in the UK would not employ someone who admitted to have a mental illness, even if they were the best candidate for the job.

Further findings revealed that 92% of the British public believes admitting to having a mental illness would damage someone’s career. The three careers respondents believed would be most damaged were doctors (56%), emergency services (54%) and teachers (48%).

The survey, commissioned for the mental health campaign group Time to Change, also found that as mental illness rises during the recession people may find it more difficult to get jobs if they admit their mental illness in a job interview.

The study asked more than 2,000 people around the UK to imagine they were interviewing someone for a job, and the interviewee admitted that from time to time they suffered from depression. Despite the respondents considering this person the best candidate for the job, more than half (56%) said would not employ them because of their mental illness.

The survey found that of these respondents nearly one in five (17%) would not offer the ‘best candidate’ the job because they considered that mental illness would make them unreliable, while 10% would worry that if they took time off sick, they’d get the blame for employing them. A further 15% worried that they wouldn’t work as well as other employees or other employees would react negatively towards them, undermining team morale.

Reponses from the survey were also broken down by professions, such as health workers, lawyers and banking. It found that bank workers were the most likely to discriminate against someone with a mental illness. Almost half of respondents (46%) working in this sector were either reluctant to employ someone with a mental illness because they’d be unreliable or worried that they’d get the blame for employing them if they went off sick.

Sue Baker, Director of Time to Change, commented: “The issue of mental health in the workplace is never more important than in time of recession. We need to be able to have a discussion about mental health problems in the workplace, and to put an end to discriminatory attitudes that prevent capable people from working.”