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Dealing With A Depressed Workforce: Are American Employers Doing Enough To Support The Mental Health Challenges Affecting Today's Employees., Charity Felts

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

This comment focuses on what American employers should be doing to recognize and deal with an employee population afflicted by mental illness. Americans suffer from a variety of mental health challenges. The symptoms of these mental illnesses vary from mild to severe. Often, if left untreated, these challenges can turn into full blown mental disorders. Employers typically ignore these issues due to high employee turnover rate and lack of employee loyalty. The cost attributable to mental illness every year is twenty-three billion dollars. However, when calculating the indirect costs like loss of productivity and absenteeism, the actual cost reaches $249 …