Managing Psychological Disorders in the Workplace
Introduction
The cost of psychological disorders is huge for employees and their organization. Our program is designed to empower the workforce with the basic psychological skills to recognize psychological disorders in themselves and co-workers and learn how to respond appropriately. Despite their technical competence, many employees come to work with unrecognized and untreated disorders, which create huge problems for the organization. Apart from raising productivity, ability to understand common disorders would help the sufferers and co-workers to adapt and foster the necessary support that can prevent the triggers and minimize the negative impact on the victim, co-workers and the organization with its facilities.
Every employee at work is regarded as normal until acute symptoms are obvious in a sufferer who may sometimes become destructive. Psychological disorders can affect work attitudes, performance and safety in any organization. In some instances, the disorders may cause an employee to assault co-workers or damage the organization’s physical assets. Basic psychological skills will enable early recognition by the sufferers and co-workers and help everyone to adapt and avoid actions that can trigger the symptoms.
Background
While most sufferers are not often dangerous to others, some could pose threats and risks. These may be in the form of self-harm, workplace violence perpetrated on others, industrial accident, compromised safety practices, poor customer services, and other counterproductive work behaviours.
Psychological disorders are known to be challenging for people both at home and the workplace. As mental health challenges, they affect the victim’s capacity to think and reason productively, and also affect emotional reactions and behavioural tendencies. Some of the common disorders include anxiety-related disorders, PTSD, depressive disorders, and substance use disorders among others. Oftentimes, many people do not recognize the manifestation of the disorders. Good news is that, with psychological skills education, much can be done to recognize the common symptoms, minimize their mainifestations and learn effective strategies for basic intervention in the workplace.
Similarly, while most of the common personality disorders do not cause distress and dysfunction, they can disrupt social relationships in the workplace. Both psychological and personality disorders can negatively impact employees, co-workers, customers, and the organization. These disorders are either not recognized or rarely emphasized in employees' placement, task assignment and support services. Basic knowledge and skills to recognize the disorders and the appropriate support to ameliorate their impacts in the workplace can be helpful to the victims, co-workers and the organization. Therefore, basic knowledge and management of the disorders in workplaces by everyone would be enhanced through our psychological skills program.