Managers and younger employees are struggling to adapt as a generation of people with higher rates of reported mental illness enter the workforce.
Many of these new workers are coming to offices from colleges and high schools where they received accommodations, such as extra time to take tests or complete assignments—in some cases from elementary school onward. They are confronting a world of work that operates under different legal standards and less-flexible pressures and deadlines.
Symptoms related to mental illnesses covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act—such as severe anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder—can be ambiguous, unpredictable, highly individualized and often invisible. That makes accommodating these disabilities one of the more difficult areas for employers, according to employment attorneys and disability experts.
“When an employee shows up with their leg in a cast, you know what the accommodations are,” said Jen Rubin, a partner with the management-side law firm Mintz. “When someone comes in and says, ‘I have severe anxiety’ or ‘I have stress,’ it’s much harder.”
Workers are making more requests for accommodations, lawyers say, and more are alleging that they are experiencing discrimination based on mental-health conditions.
The number of charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission citing discrimination related to anxiety disorders climbed to 371 in 2019 compared with 65 in 2006, according to the latest federal figures. The number that cite post-traumatic stress disorder rose to 208 from 35 in that time.
The EEOC has sued employers for allegedly firing workers with mental-health conditions or declining to provide reasonable accommodations. In one case, the agency sued a trucking company that allegedly charged a fee to a driver who needed a service animal in his vehicle to help control his anxiety. The company, Transport America, agreed to pay the driver $22,500 to settle. It didn’t admit liability in the consent decree and declined to comment about the case.
Another case involved a young woman with autism and anxiety who brought a job coach to an interview at a Party City store. The hiring manager allegedly attempted to cut the interview short and made demeaning comments about the applicant. The company agreed to pay $155,000 to settle. It didn’t admit liability and didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“Employers who fall back on fears or stereotypes could end up violating the ADA,” said Sharon Rennert, a senior attorney adviser at the EEOC. A requested accommodation may be unworkable, she added. For example, if call-center employees are expected to answer 10 to 15 calls an hour, and someone says their anxiety prevents them from answering more than five, the employer might argue that the accommodation deviates from standards that apply to all call-center employees.
“In that circumstance, the employer would have legitimate reason to say no,” Ms. Rennert said.
Several management-side lawyers said they advise clients that there is no one-size-fits-all accommodation for mental-health conditions, and that they should work with employees, when possible, to adapt work to meet business goals without engaging in illegal discrimination.
Young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 have the highest prevalence of serious mental illness among all age groups, with a rate of 7.5%, compared with 5.6% for ages 26 to 49, and 2.7% for those over 50, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Students in the U.S. who receive a so-called 504 designation—which is meant to give people with difficulties such as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder a chance to handle the stress of schoolwork at their own pace or with accommodation—more than tripled from 2000 to 2016, according to federal data.
But rules that guide educational accommodations, such as who gets extra time for assignments, are different from those governing employment situations, Ms. Rennert said. Employers are required to offer “reasonable accommodations,” but they can also decline requests by arguing they create an undue hardship because of cost, productivity or some other reason.
“Historically, undue hardships focused on money,” said Domenique Camacho Moran, head of the labor and employment practice at law firm Farrell Fritz PC. A person with back problems might ask for a special chair, for instance, and their employer could deny it if the chair cost $7,000. Today, she said, “it’s less about a specific product and much more about a change in the work itself: the way it’s done, when it’s done, where it’s done.”
Companies are seeing more requests to work from home, have flexible schedules or take unpaid leaves of absence, she said. Sometimes employees choose not to disclose their conditions, or not to ask for accommodations, for fear of being stigmatized or penalized, which can create problems if their work begins to suffer, she said.
“You can end up in a scenario where someone is about to get fired and it turns out there was a really simple fix and it never came up,” Ms. Moran said. “The employee never raised concerns and suddenly it’s the eleventh hour.”
Even when employees receive accommodations, “new supervisor syndrome” can create instability, said Brian East, senior attorney with Disability Rights Texas. If a manager leaves, for instance, their replacement may bristle when they learn of an accommodation, such as a person’s need to have directions written in an email rather than shouted across a room.
“The supervisor doesn’t like it, thinks it’s a hassle and instead of trying to work with the person, they ratchet up the pressure in the hopes that the person will leave,” he said.
Attorneys and advocates stress that designing workplace accommodations requires an interactive process between employee and employer.
“If it’s a five-person office and the one person who does finance asks for a two-month leave—maybe they can’t afford to let the person do that,” said Ms. Rubin. “The employer can say, ‘How about you take a week off?’
“It becomes a negotiation,” she said. “That’s what the law is trying to promote.”