Diagnosing Whistle-Blowers as Mental Cases

In China, according to the New York Times, whistle-blowers are sent to mental hospitals. Whistle-blowers are crazy troublemakers and have no legal protection in China, where laws providing protection often lag. So, to avoid embarrassment and save money, whistle-blowers are lashed to hospital beds, forced to take pills and given injections.

Couldn’t happen in America, right? As reported several years ago by a psychiatric social worker who was employed by the U.S. Public Health Service and who was assigned to do fitness-for-duty exams for government employees whose bosses thought they were going off the deep end, it does happen in the U.S. It didn’t take the social worker long to figure out that many of the employees he examined had blown the whistle on the government agency for which they worked. Instead of being labeled as whistle-blowers, however, they were labeled as “unbalanced.”

In recent years, whistle-blowing employees have found themselves in court, suing their employers for retaliating against them for their whistle-blowing activities and for regarding them as being mentally unstable (and, thus, disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act). Apparently, the Chinese have nothing on Americans when it comes to mixing whistle-blowing with mental institutions. Sample Dumaguit v. Potter, Crawford v. United States, and Jacques v. Dimarzio, Inc.

In the Houston Law Review and the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, the link between whistle-blowing and mental illness is given serious consideration. Whistle-blowers aren’t often greeted with open arms. They face ostracism, hostility and rejection; taunting co-workers; abusive supervisors; attacks on their professional abilities and sometimes, threats of physical harm. It’s little wonder, according to professionals who’ve studied the plight of whistle-blowers, that they experience mental problems. Some experts believe that some whistle-blowers are driven mad by the way they are treated.

There are reasons other than potential legal liability to whistle-blowing employees that should make employers welcome whistle-blowing complaints. If the complaints of whistle-blowers are taken seriously, cases of financial fraud will be avoided; workplace safety problems will be fixed before they become catastrophes; and unlawful discrimination and harassment environments will be nipped in the bud.

If an employers’ own desire for an ethical workplace isn’t enough, there are a multiplicity of laws that should cause employers to deal with whistle-blowers in a proper manner: Sarbanes-Oxley; workers’ compensation laws; Title VII; OSHA; state whistle-blower statutes; Fair Labor Standards Act; Americans with Disabilities Act; etc., etc., etc. Some employees are troublemakers instead of whistle-blowers, but there can be a fine line. Err on the side of reasonableness and prudence. It’ll keep you out of trouble and make for a better place for you employees to work.

1. 

   ACU Frank says:

   December 22, 2008 at 10:54 am

   Unfortunately, not every whistleblower is a Karen Silkwood. And not all the rest are ‘troublemakers’. In the awkward area between lies the employee who truly believes they are exposing something terribly wicked, but whose perception is tragi-comically distorted. Those are the employees we deal with all-to-often. Like the young lady who filed a complaint when I wouldn’t help her go online to file an unemployment insurance claim. Of course, that’s not something I would do anyway. But did I mention that she was still employed by us, on FMLA for childbirth, and drawing on our short-term disability? And did I mention that her complaint was “filed” with our third-party Med Flex administrator?
2. 

   John Phillips says:

   December 22, 2008 at 4:50 pm

   Frank,

   Thanks for you comments. The line is fine indeed, but employees should have the right to blow the whistle without being labeled crazy, at least not right off the bat. I don’t know many employees with the courage to blow the whistle, because they know that retribution will follow, they’ll be deemed as crackpots, etc. As I said in my original post, if we listened to whistle-blowing employees more often and took them more seriously, we could’ve avoided some of the most catastrophic messes in modern business history.

   Troublemakers should be shown the door. Whistle-blowers should be shown the money.

   ML,

   Thanks for the link to this post on your blog. I enjoyed reading your roundup and am pleased to be included in it.

   Happy holidays to both of you.

   John
3. 

   Stacy Patterson says:

   January 13, 2009 at 1:03 pm

   I am a whistleblower. I know that blowing the whistle can definitely cause mental illness. Geesh. And, actually, I think employers would prefer it to cause mental illness. In fact, as soon as you do it practically, they make all the personnel employees believe that they shouldn’t want to talk to you any more.

   I blew the whistle while working for a State Government Agency, too. And it is quite easy for a Government Agency to cause people to believe that the employee is the one who is mentally unstable.

   I worked at the Office of Inspector General, where there should actually be a lot more whistleblowing going on than actually happens.