It's My Cubicle, And I'll Cry If I Want To

Talking about mental health issues at work is no longer taboo. In fact, the office might be just the place to get the help you need.

- Emma Haak McKinley

AUTUMN IS A TRIGGER for Giulia Lukach, 36, who works in digital marketing at a national retailer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her first hospitalization for bipolar disorder took place in September 2009, her second in October 2012. And two years later, while the rest of San Francisco was basking in beautiful October weather, Lukach noticed the signs of a relapse: sleeplessness, lack of appetite, and mounting anxiety.

She alerted her boss, letting her know that though she couldn’t come into the office, she’d stay in touch via email. Her boss didn’t miss a beat: “She told me to take care of myself,” Lukach says. Even after Lukach wound up hospitalized for two weeks, her conversations with her employer weren’t about whether she could continue to work there; they focused on creating a healthy transition back. Lukach still reports to the same supervisor—and has since been promoted to a directorlevel role.

Such a scenario would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, when talking about depression, never mind bipolar disorder, was seen as an admission of weakness or unreliability—and could have dire career consequences. “People didn’t take these conditions seriously,” says Darcy Gruttadaro, director of the Center for Workplace Mental Health, set up in 2005 by the American Psychiatric Association to help organizations support their employees’ well-being. In the days before Brooke Shields, Lena Dunham, and J.K. Rowling spoke out about mental illness, women with depression and anxiety were often too embarrassed to broach the subject with their friends, let alone those signing their paychecks.