Should I Share My Mental Health Struggles at Work?

By Samantha Cooper, Staff Writer

March 2025

Having a mental health diagnosis can make navigating relationships difficult. But while people may be able to have intimate conversations about their diagnosis with friends and family, they may not feel like they can have them in the workplace.

Broaching the topic of mental health in the office can often feel daunting, but sometimes it’s a necessary conversation.

“I think each mental health concern is its own experience,” says Seth Hayden, PhD, LPC, LCMHC, an assistant professor and the clinical mental health program coordinator in the Department of Counseling at Wake Forest University. “People might share different things in different ways and different presentations from day to day. And [colleagues] might have a sense where our mood shifts a certain amount; we might show up one day in a particular state and another day in another kind of state.”

Having this discussion with a supervisor is also important to get accommodations.

Diagnoses and Discrimination

Statistics from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) National Network show that over 46 million adults in the U.S. have a mental health condition and that these types of conditions are the most common type of disability.

According to the World Health Organization, the most common types of mental health diagnoses are:

• Anxiety disorders
• Depression
• Bipolar disorders
• Schizophrenia
• Neurodevelopmental disorders, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism

These diagnoses can severely affect employees’ work performance and relationships between colleagues due to preexisting social stigmas.

These stigmas exist for many reasons, including lack of education and awareness, says Jamie LaFevers, LCPC, owner of Jamie LaFevers and Associates, PLLC, a practice in Chicago that offers career counseling.

“Misinformation is rampant and sometimes can do more harm than it can help,” she says. “From what I have observed, more people are willing to accept emotional or mood disorders such as anxiety and depression and less willing to accept neurocognitive disorders like ADHD, autism or a learning disability.”

As such, supervisors may assume an employee is lying about or exaggerating symptoms, especially if symptoms differ from popular stereotypes.

“The issue is, for even more commonly known disorders, there’s not as much of an understanding of how it presents differently from person to person,” says Farrah Harris, LCPC, founder of WorkingWell Daily LLC, a consulting and coaching business in Illinois.

Stigma of diagnoses also differs between workplaces — the divide is especially apparent in the divide between “blue-collar” and “white-collar” jobs. For example, symptoms of mental illness, such as physical fatigue and mental exhaustion, are more common in people who do manual labor or work in retail. These types of work tend to have fewer protections or accommodations than office-based and salaried positions, Harris says.

Blue-collar jobs also tend to have a more “stoic culture,” where expressing emotions is frowned upon, she says. “There’s an old-school way of thinking, which means they may not be as progressive as office jobs regarding mental health awareness.”

Disclosing to a Supervisor

In any job, sharing a diagnosis with someone at work could have severe career consequences. However, disclosing a diagnosis to supervisors is necessary to access accommodations.

“Disclosing any personal information is risky and can cause unwanted attention and unjustified responses from those in the community and at work,” LaFevers says.

Yet the rewards may outweigh the risks in some cases. Disclosing diagnoses may help mend difficult work relationships or make it possible to file for discrimination should things not be handled well.

An employee who requests accommodations for a mental health disorder can discuss their diagnosis with a counselor and determine how their diagnosis affects them in the workplace. LaFevers suggests scheduling a meeting with a supervisor, manager or human resources professional and allowing time to prepare documentation about the disability, how it affects work performance and examples of the accommodations needed. An employee can do this with the help of a counselor.

She gives an example of a dialogue: “I want to thank you for meeting with me today. You may, or may not, be aware I have been struggling to finish my work on time and have been taking work home. This is not ideal for me, and I recognize it is not sustainable and could lead to burnout. I wanted to take this as an opportunity to let you know that I struggle with an anxiety disorder, and one barrier to this is difficulty managing my workload. I have considered a couple of accommodations I thought could be helpful and would love to review them with you to see if it is feasible for my role. Please let me know if you require any additional information from me to be able to effectively start this process.”

What to Know About Accommodations

The ADA makes it unlawful to discriminate in employment against a qualified individual with a disability. To be eligible to be covered by the ADA, a person must have an impairment that limits their ability to do certain activities, such as walking, speaking, performing manual tasks or caring for themselves. If the disability doesn’t prevent a person from performing their job, they can be covered by the ADA.

According to LaFevers, here are several common, easy-to-implement accommodations:

• Asking for a flexible schedule, such as adjustable start and end times
• Wearing headphones in the office
• Receiving email reminders for updates on projects
• Using modified equipment such as standing desks
• Working from home

Before going into a meeting to discuss accommodations, an employee should know exactly what they want to discuss, including the aspects of their diagnosis that affect their ability to do their job, the accommodations they wish to seek and an explanation of how those accommodations will help them.

But, LaFevers says, the most important thing to remember is you shouldn’t force yourself to perform a job if you are struggling to keep up. “Work should be something that you feel competent and capable of doing consistently and effectively and provides you with financial reimbursement that you feel is an accurate reflection of the work that you do,” she says.