For now I’ve just been praying for her and trying to get to know her better. I probably will not be approaching the HR Dept. unless the situation worsens. Recently she seems to be doing better, so I guess everyone’s prayers have been helping!
I’m glad you decided not to approach HR. I second that decision, and I offer the following reinforcement for you:
For the love of God,
DO NOT ANYBODY CONTACT YOUR HR DEPARTMENT AND TELL THEM YOU SUSPECT A COWORKER HAS MENTAL ILLNESS, UNLESS IT IS AN EMERGENCY AND SOMEONE’S IMMEDIATE SAFETY IS IN JEOPARDY!!!
I had a mental illness, severe bipolar disorder. When I started showing symptoms, I began taking some medication my doctor prescribed for me (but didn’t know if I was going to take) and I confided in my boss what was going on, and he understood it.
A few days after I started medication, a coworker who claimed to be my good friend, came to the conclusion that I was having some problems, because I was acting strangely. She knew I had mental illness problems in the distant past, but that it was over and that I had no treatment. She knew nothing about my conversation with my doctor nor my boss – but she assumed since I hadn’t told her I was taking the medicine I wasn’t.
Anyway, she decided it was time to take matters into her own hands so in order to “help” me, she decided she would bring the company’s resources to bear on this problem. She couldn’t get ahold of our boss because he out of town in a meeting. Gosh, she might have had to wait an hour or two, but no, she thought I needed “help” and “rest” so she “helped” me by contacting the second level manager, who hardly knew me because he was always out of town – he had an office in Wichita, but stayed mostly in his New Jersey office.
The first I knew anything, my “friend” got a little underling to back her up, and asked me into a conference room where she said, “you need rest and you should go home.” I told her I felt fine, and she said, “you’re scaring people.” Later I was to learn that my other coworkers did not feel threatened at all; she was scared “for me” that I needed help.
Puzzled, I went home. Soon I got a call from a company psychologist, who said he needed to have clearance before he could let me back to work. He said he had arranged for an interview at out local hospital, and that if I reported to the ER I would be able to take the interview to see if I can come back to work.
Turns out it was a trap. There was no doctor, and no interview. I was led into a room and asked to wait, until there were about eight people in white coats who came to take me, against my will, into a lockup ward. That was on June 8, 2001.
First of all, a mental patient does not have the rights an accused criminal has. They refused to tell me on what basis they were locking me up (I kept asking them why they thought I was a threat to myself or others) and under whose authority. The wouldn’t tell me. They don’t have to tell me anything. Mental patients have no rights. I was in the lockup for three days, before I met the woman who had signed the order for me to be captured like an animal, no interviews, no questions asked, no right to object, much less appeal. The woman had accepted the hearsay of my doctor, who had accepted the hearsay of the company psychologist who never met me except a half hour on the telephone when he called me at home, who listened to the hearsay of the second level manager who didn’t know me, who listened to the mistaken “facts” of my coworker – later I found out she had told the manager this: “Alan is acting strangely, and it’s scaring people. He has a history of mental disease, and right now he is showing symptoms but is not taking any medication for it.”
Fast forward: that hospitalization was the single most destructive thing that could have been done to me and my family, in my life. Now, 10 years later, I am healing from it.
Yes, my dear friend Bonnie was so kind to me, that she got me help even though I didn’t realize I “needed” it. The other engineers in my department had no idea what she was talking about “he’s scaring people” but that didn’t matter – now we have a situation in which management and the psychology department were operating under the premise that I am an uncontrollable mental patient, refusing treatment, and scaring people. What else could they do then get me out using whatever methods available.
After several weeks, the doctor, with permission from my psychiatrist (not the person who locked me up but a doctor I actually trusted) arranged for me to go back to work four hours a day, but after I was back for two days they gave me notice that I was being “laid off.”
So I lost my job, and ultimately my career. My friend, by her intervention and by going behind my back and going above my boss’s head, took the first step that resulted in my family with stay-at-home wife and six children, to fall into poverty.
There’s more to the story, but I hope I have convinced you NOT to take matters into your own hands unless you know pretty darn well what you’re talking about and somebody’s at imminent risk of getting physically hurt.
(continued)
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