Health Touches

When a co-worker has a problem with depression, it can frequently become another person’s problem. People with depression have little energy, are likely to procrastinate, passive, and negative. This means if you are excited about a project, they will tell you all the things that will go wrong. If you have a deadline, you are likely to have to wait until the very last minute to get their contribution. If there is a problem, they won’t try to solve it. And being around them can feel like a drag on your own emotions. So, what do you do?

Depression arises for many reasons. Sometimes it is situational, as when a person goes through a life change such as losing a spouse to divorce or when a person has reached the burnout stage in his or her job. Sometimes depression comes about because that is how the person’s brain is “wired.” However it comes about, it is challenging to deal with in the workplace.

The first thing to understand is that these people feel hopeless about a lot of things, including their ability to do better on their job. Whatever part of the job they dislike the most will be put off or never done. If they hate making phone calls, the phone calls are likely not going to be made and yet the depressed person is not going to be able to explain why they weren’t made.

One of the worst things about depression is that it puts people in a negative pattern of behavior that worsens over time: they feel bad, they don’t do something they were supposed to, they feel worse, they fail to do something else they were supposed to, they feel even worse than that. Their mind tells them if they just stay home in bed all day, things will get better, which of course they don’t.

At the same time, they are likely not able to identify this cycle, much less get themselves out of it unless they get some help.

Fortunately, it’s possible to help people create a positive cycle. For example, suppose a depressed co-worker makes one phone call. You don’t want to praise because praise does not help self-esteem. It gives the message that you think the person is a child, which regardless of whether it is true or not, is negative. Instead, you want to help the person identify his own positive feelings about having done that. So you could say something like: “I bet you feel relieved you got that done,” or, “It sure is nice when a call like that goes so well.”

You can also help this cycle along by asking the person to do very small tasks instead of giving them large, potentially overwhelming tasks. When they experience success, they are more likely to continue to work well.

One instance of this type of positive interaction will not solve a lifelong depression problem, but a series of this type of interaction might help the person to work well with you even if work relations with other people remain challenging.

Depression is one of the most common forms of mental illness and it is extremely likely you will be working with someone who has at least a mild case of it. Using the positive cycle strategy can help you and your co-worker get work done.