"Burnout" and Depression at Work: How can employers deal with it?

Depressive disorders belong to the European countries the most common diseases and go with most lived with severe disabilities live years accompanied. Depression is by far the biggest challenge in the field of mental illness in the workplace and about 11 percent of EU citizens suffer throughout their lives from depression.

Current figures show German health insurance: The percentage of days lost through mental illness is rising continuously. Sickness longer outages in the job and increasingly disability are consequences of depressive disorders. Reason enough for companies to address these issues. But while there are for many physical illnesses, such as back pain, already offers prevention, action plans and reintegration assistance, it is the mental illness of employees often still face rather unprepared. The action network Depression in the workplace, the Foundation German Depression help managers and health officials in companies active support.

"Lack of knowledge of the parties concerned and the personnel managers in enterprises regarding the symptoms and causes of depression and its impact on the working and social behavior are often the cause of a delayed or suboptimal treatment," says senior lecturer Dr. Christine Rummel-Kluge, specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy and managing director of the Foundation German depression Help, on the occasion of 9. European Depression Day at 1. October 2012.

"Here we can take remedial action: In lectures and training courses we inform executives about depression and other mental illnesses. This knowledge and the opportunity to practice the conversation with sick employees in role-playing games, we repeatedly experience that managers find better access to this topic. "

"Psychosocial Coaching - support for the re-integration of the mentally ill long-term unemployed, but not only in the workplace but also in long-term unemployed mental disorders are common, are often not recognized and remain untreated. As a result, mental illness often prevents re-integration into the labor market. So depressed people falls as job search due to the disease related listlessness particularly difficult, and it can be illness in interviews often do not represent a positive. Model projects for "Psychosocial Coaching" at long-term unemployed in Munich and Leipzig were able to show that a so-called "pilot function" was implemented successfully with this additional offer. Long-term unemployed people with mental illness can be identified which are not, or not treated to guidelines to be guided by a comprehensive diagnosis if indicated in the existing supply system. So then the mental illness be eliminated as a switching barrier. Therefore, the Foundation German Depression help support the nationwide expansion of promising pilot project "Psychosocial Coaching".

Source: Berlin [German Depression Help]