Final WP#3

I would put lots more work into this if I could resubmit, and I actually might anyways because I have an interest in presenting it to the professional community.
To start with, I would phrase the entire paper more like an argument, and less like an informational work. This might require some thesis tweaking. I would also include more content connection around the supporting data, as I think I have lots of good numbers, not enough opinions. Not lastly, I would certainly sculpt a more robust conclusive paragraph, the current one is weak. Also I need to correct APA style when citing secondary citations.
NOTE: Formatting was not preserved when copy-and-pasting from MS Word. Please forgive, thanks.


Ryan MacNamara
ENG102
WP#3
07/28/09

Dollars and Sense: The Cost of Depression in the Workplace


Drawing on a common emotional repertoire, everyone ‘has the blues’, or feels sad, from time to time. Depression is a mental disorder that often causes feelings far beyond this common response. This disorder is characterized by symptoms including extended periods of depressed mood, impaired concentration, loss of interest in daily activities, and chronic fatigue. These symptoms are especially detrimental to employee performance in the workplace. I learned this through personal experience, when, years after being diagnosed with recurring major depression in early 2000, I suffered a depressive episode in late 2006. Because of the symptoms of this disorder, I was not able to meet the duties of my job. The episode cost me my job, and cost my employer a normally productive employee. My experience, and my employer’s, is not a singularity. Employee depression is a widespread occurrence that incurs significant costs to employers in the form of increased healthcare costs, increased absenteeism, and lost productivity.
Depression’s presence in the workplace is universal. It is the most commonly occuring mental disorder, having been referred to as “the common cold of mental illness”(Worsnop, 1992). Its occurrence shows no discrimination among race or culture. Depression will affect approximately 1 in 10 people thoughout a lifetime (National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH], 2000), and while 1 in 10 people in the general world population will experience an episode of depression, 7 in 10 people participate in the world’s workforce, with this rate increasing to 9 in 10 in developed countries (Central Intelligence Agency [CIA], 2007). This indicates that almost 1 in 10 workers in the industrialized world will experience at least one episode of depression in their lifetimes’.
The financial burden on employers of depressed employees has increased over the past two decades. In 1990, employee depression costs were estimated at about $24 billion (Hirschman, 2004). Since that time, awareness of the disease has grown, and a proliferation of antidepression medications have been made available and aggressively advertised. Following this popularization of the disorder, an article in Managed Healthcare Executive reports an annual employer price tag of $44 billion, almost double that of 1990 (Edlin, 2006).
One way this cost manifests itself is through increased healthcare expenditures. These costs arise from employees seeking company-subsidized treatment for their illness, including visits to healthcare providers and prescribed medications. A review of published literature shows that depressed employees generate about twice the healthcare costs of workers not suffering from depression (Kirschstein, 2000). Langlieb and Kahn (2005), compared healthcare costs of depressed versus nondepressed employees. They found that depressed employees incurred about $3200 in a year, while employees not suffering from the disorder had annual costs around $1600.
Another major cost of employee depression comes from increased absence from work. When employees are unable to attend work due to illness, deadlines can go unmet, and resources spread thin as other employees compensate for the hole in the workforce. Depressed employees are more likely to miss work due to symptoms such as chronic fatigue and loss of interest in daily activities. The Pacific Bell company, a major provider of telephone services, discovered that employee depression accounted for 11% of all absences, while Hughes Electronics Corporation, another leading provider in the telecommunications industry, found that employee depression was the leading cause of absenteeism (Steffick, Fortney, Smith, & Pyne 2006). Edlin quotes Dan McCarthy, of the prominent healthcare management provider Magellan Health Services, as saying depressed employees “have three times more sick days” than healthy employees (p. 49). My personal experience confirms this. I was employed for four of the six months of my recent depressive episode. In that four months, I had three times more sick days than I had for the previous three years combined.
Another type of absence arises when employees take disability leave. Disability leave can cause an employee to be absent from work for days, weeks, or even months, and it represents a significant portion of depression-related absenteeism costs. Major depression is currently one of the top ten causes of worker disability worldwide, and affects depressed employees about twice as often as those without depression (Kirschstein, 2000). This trend is growing. By the year 2020, it will rise to the number two position on that list, according to the World Health Organization (Langlieb & Kahn, 2005).


It may be argued that absence due to depression is no more or less significant than cases of other major illnesses. This is not the case. Depression has been found to cause more missed work than traditional major physical illnesses. For example, Steffick et al., finds that “depression accounts for more days absent from work than hypertension and heart disease combined”. Another survey reported 26% of people “taking time off work for mental health reasons compared with 20% …. for physical illness” (p. 16). In addition, depressed employee disability leaves tend to be longer, averaging 40 days, than leaves for physical disorders, which average only 29 days. These statistics show that workplace depression presents far greater potential for for employees to miss work, resulting in higher costs for employers.
Finally, the leading cause of depression-related workplace costs, and the most insidious, occurs when depressed employees attend work. Depressed employees, who often suffer from apathy and impaired concentration, often get significantly less work done than their nondepressed coworkers. This is referred to as “presenteeism” (Edlin, 2006). A review of research by Langlieb and Kahn (2005) found that “depression was highly associated with work limitations in time management, interpersonal/mental functioning, and overall output” (p. 1102). The loss in productive time for a depressed employee can be as much as 370% greater than employees not suffering from this disorder. This lost time causes a drop in productivity of the company, and contribute heavily to the $44 billion in costs previously mentioned, accounting for more than 25% of employer costs.
This loss of productivity is not limited to the ill individual. Depressed people are often affected with surly moods and stubbornly negative states of thought. The effect of these symptoms on the surrounding environment is described in Langlieb and Kahn: “Employees who are depressed at work have been shown to lower the morale of their coworkers, resulting in higher turnover and general discontent”(p. 1103). In my management experience, high turnover is costly, with each employee turned representing a cost of about three-to-five thousand dollars. The relative cost of presenteeism is captured in Carolyn Hirschman’s article in a 2004 issue of Employee Benefit News: “Joseph Marlowe, of Aon Consulting’s health and welfare practice, says, ‘If employers looked at the full picture, they’d definitely be putting much more attention on depression because the real cost is with presenteeism’”.
As depression’s frequency receives more attention, its effect on business and economy is coming under scrutiny. It has been shown to increase costs by elevating healthcare spending, causing employees to miss work, and even worse, reducing the productivity of the entire work environment. If employers wish to minimize these costs, they must first acknowledge and identify them in their own companies. The results of knowing and controlling these costs will benefit not only company profit margins, but the welfare of employees worldwide.