Should I disclose mental health issues to my employer?

As a successful senior developer, there are many discussions I feel are important to have, but don't feel safe having.

This is why I'm choosing to publish this from a private, anonymous account. Because I want to help others, while avoiding the unconventional nature of this advice to hurt my career advancement later. Anonymity allows genuine honesty, so this article will be the most honest you'll read this week.

Let's start with an important question that I've been asked many times: Should I disclose mental health issues to my employer?

There are two situations in which this question can be raised: during a job interview, or once a job has been secured.

Disclosing mental health issues during job interviews: good or bad idea?

Generally speaking, honesty is good for you... if, and only if, you can afford it.

If you're worried about your next rent and have a family to support, then you absolutely cannot afford to be honest.

I've been asked before about a hole in my resume during a job interview. I could afford to be honest, so I told the truth: that hole is a depression I went through eight years ago.

Because of this answer, I did not get the job.

Sidenote: yes, it's highly illegal in most countries to discriminate on mental health, and if I had recorded that conversation I could have sued and made a lot of money.

Anyway, did I regret telling the truth? Fuck no. I had plenty of other job options to pick from, so I'd rather go with a management that won't hold a depression eight fucking years ago against me.

I could afford to be honest, so I was, and it all turned out for the best. Now if the job market at the time had been worse, that might have been a very different story.

Disclosing mental health issues after you secured a job

The answer here will depend on many factors, starting with the nature of your mental health issues. I will focus on three mental disorders: Depression, that I experienced, and Autism / ADHD, that I experience every day. This advice should also be applicable for other disorders, like Schizophrenia.

If you're currently depressed, your work quality might drop. Will that drop be both significant & noticed? If so, disclosing the depression might be a good idea.

But let's be clear, companies are not your friends. Any company will chew you and spit you out if it earns them the extra dollar.

If you feel like you can be discriminated against for disclosing a mental health issue, you should definitely avoid doing it.

And most of the time, you will definitely be discriminated against. Even if you're still managing to be as productive as you were before your depression, people will assume you are not. This will definitely be a liability for you.

So the most important question to ask yourself is: can I effectively hide my mental disorder(s) ?

If the answer is yes, then you have absolutely nothing to gain by disclosing a mental disorder. Hence, you should absolutely shut the fuck up.

If the answer is no... then you might want to consider disclosing it, depending on the severity of the prejudice you might suffer.

All mental disorders are not equal

I live in a country where ADHD is not well known, and when it's known it's almost always completely misunderstood. As a consequence, there can be a high prejudice against this mental disorder, so disclosing it doesn't serve any purpose.

Remember, I want to disclose a mental disorder because I'm acting a certain, unconventional way, and cannot mask it. If my work colleagues cannot link my weirdness to the mental disorder, then it is completely useless to disclose it.

Autism, on the other hand, is much more widely known, and people understand at the very least that autistic people can act unconventionally. If you are autistic, you have a high chance of accidentally hurting someone's feelings by being too honest, to miss obvious social cues, or just to act "weird" in social contexts. And when you act like this, people will assume you're an asshole, or you hate them. Generally both.

This is why Autism is generally a good disorder to disclose to your work colleagues. It's not seen as impacting your productivity, it's extremely difficult to mask on the regular, and it can saves you from being hated by everyone at the office.

That being said, you probably still don't want to disclose it during a job interview (at least if you can't afford it).

Positive discrimination sucks too

Finally, let's say you have a caring, very nice, and safe team around you. You feel at ease disclosing, for example, that you have ADHD.

This can still hurt your career.

Your team might see you as more limited because of your ADHD. They might give you less complex projects to work on, purely out of good intentions for your wellbeing (but also to, you know, increase the general team's efficiency).

Even thought they're trying to be nice, this is still hurting your personal growth and possibilities of advancement. You don't want to be in that position, if you can avoid it.

Conclusion

Should I disclose mental health issues to my employer?

Generally speaking, Absolutely not. Not during job interviews, not after you secured a job. Never.

The only situation when you should disclose a mental disorder is if you think it will hurt you more to not disclose it.

In doubt, you should abstain. You can reveal something later, but not un-reveal it.

Hope you enjoyed this article. If you want more of this kind of content, let me know (in public or in private).

Good luck out there!