Anything to declare...only my paranoia

Journalist Richard Shrub examines the thorny issues surrounding coming out about mental health conditions when you’re in the job market

I was a lamb to the slaughter when looking for employment on graduating with an MA in broadcast journalism. I believed that the Disability Discrimination Act would prevent employers from discriminating against me. I learned the hard way that this was not the case. After flying the interview, and being verbally given a job offer, I mentioned in passing that I have paranoia.

Three people grilled me for an hour about my psychiatric illness. The job offer was withdrawn and because they did not put it in writing, my lawyers said that it was their word against mine.

Cheltenham Borough Council was open about the fact that it would have broken disability discrimination law if they had known of Christine Laird’s psychiatric history. Having proceeded to implement its decision to employ her, they sued her for almost £1 million because she had not mentioned her depression on her pre-employment questionnaire. They lost.

This raises the question, whether it is right to lie about your psychiatric history on your pre-employment questionnaire? You’d have to be brave to mention your psychiatric illness in the face of statistics such as those revealed by mental health rights lobby Time to Change recently: apparently 60 per cent of us will face discrimination in the workplace. Society, which generally only encounters schizophrenics like me in the media when we have battered our parents to death, is far from ready to allow us a productive place in it.

The Laird case raises an interesting point of law. It is illegal to lie on your pre-employment health questionnaire. However, it is then illegal for them to discriminate against you on the basis of your disability. In practice the mental health charity Rethink says that: “Those who do not disclose lose protection under the Disability Discrimination Act and can be fired if they are discovered to have withheld this information. People are stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

A similar position of power to Laird’s was had by someone else with psychiatric history – in 10 Downing Street. In a recent BBC Two documentary, Alistair Campbell talked of how he was put under a police section when spending time with his friend, then Labour leader Neil Kinnock. He stayed friends with the Labour leadership because Kinnock’s eventual successor Tony Blair recruited him, in full knowledge of his toxic psychosis, as Downing Street press secretary. He held the post for a decade.

Do we lie? The odds are still against you if you don’t. But unless more people do tell the truth, will progress be made? If like me you have the gumption to tell the truth, and campaign when foiled, then we will all make progress.