Mental Health Disclosure at Work and the Duty of Care in Employment Law

Abstract

Disclosing one's mental state in the work environment has become an important employment law issue. Mental health conditions experienced by employees may require them to disclose their health status to their employer in order to get reasonable adjustment in the workplace, health care, and protection from discrimination. However, such factors as confidentiality concerns, stigmatization, career development and job security often prevent workers from disclosing their mental health conditions. This paper seeks to look at the legal and ethical issues involved in the workplace mental health disclosure through an analysis of the employer's duty of care towards their employees. This paper will address the issue of the privacy of the employee, confidentiality, equality in the workplace, reasonable adjustment in the workplace, legal protection and human resource management in creating supportive workplaces. The problems of mental health disclosure and how these issues can be solved through employee awareness, organizational stigmatization, policy clarification and balancing of employee privacy and the needs of workplace will also be addressed. In addition, the paper addresses the issues of transparency, anti-discrimination measures, employee assistance program and reasonable adjustment. This paper uses the conceptual and descriptive method of research drawn from existing literature and principles of employment law.