Work It Podcast: When is it safe to tell your boss and co-workers about your mental health struggles?

Diagnosed with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, it took Edwin Chaw months before he felt ready to disclose his condition to his colleagues.

Now a compliance officer with abrdn and an ambassador with Beyond the Label, he gives his advice on how to navigate work relationships.

Here is an excerpt from the conversation:

Edwin Chaw:
I've been through a few workplaces at this point in time. The very first workplace, I went in with that fear; I had that constant fear thinking, "Okay, it's a matter of time before I slip back (in)to a very bad depression."

And what happened there was I had a few trusted friends and colleagues that I could tell that this might happen, and because they were advocates, they would then point me to, "Actually in this workplace, we have policies, we have resources. And the culture here is that we recognise that everyone's going to go through things, so what we need from you is to let us know when something might be happening soon, so we can then step in and help you."

Tiffany Ang:
Wow, that is a very, very supportive environment. So, you're saying that even from your first job, you decided to be very transparent and say, "This is me. This is what I'm struggling with."

Edwin:
Not fully because I did keep it hidden from my bosses at first. My closer colleagues, we went out for lunch, and then I finally went, "Oh, I went through this as a child. I'm still going through this now." And the colleague just went, "Yeah, me too. I've been through some of this before." 

Tiffany:
But at which point, I'm curious, did you feel safe enough to tell these colleagues? I mean, surely, it's not a conversation you will have in your first week of work, because you're getting to know each other right? 

Edwin:
Absolutely. I think it took me at least a few months - three or four months. And I mean, I didn't realise I was doing back then, but now looking back, you're looking for markers that demonstrate that this is a safe workplace to make those disclosures. 

So, the resources can look like flexible leave policies to let you take a couple of days off, no questions asked, without any medical certificate or that kind of thing.

Or it could be access to an employee assistance programme, external providers where they can step in and help. The next one after that was what is the culture in this workplace. So, you can have policies, and you can resources, but if everyone working there doesn't think it's a big deal, then the policies and resources are just fluff. They end up being fluff.

So, you then monitor, and you see the other teams. Do they talk about this openly?