Safety & Health Alert: Getting Help for Depression

Almost one in 10 American adults — about 19 million people across the country each year — suffers from depression.

Lots of us say we're "depressed" when our favorite team is on a losing streak or we have a bad day at work, but real depression is lasting, serious and can lead to physical illness. Fortunately, it's also highly treatable.

CWA considers mental health a critical part of overall health care for our members. Across the country, our bargaining units work with our employers to ensure that referral programs are available to help members and their families. These are often called MAPs or EAPs — member or employee assistance programs.

These programs generally offer a certain number of free sessions with a trained counselor or therapist. Those few sessions can be life-changing and life-saving. But many people need more. We work hard in bargaining to ensure that our health care plans provide insurance coverage for further mental health treatment, including therapy and prescription drugs, as needed.

In the past, assistance programs focused mainly on drug and alcohol abuse. That's still a critical problem for many people, but the programs today address a wide range of issues: Relationship problems, financial troubles, concerns about parenting, worries about retirement and much more.

How do you know if you — or a friend — are depressed? Besides a persistent feeling of sadness, here are some of the symptoms, though you don't have to have all of them to be diagnosed with depression:

• Loss of interest in usual activities.
• Feeling the need to "hide" from others.
• Feelings of worthlessness.
• Changes in eating and sleeping habits.
• Trouble concentrating and making decisions.
• Increased substance use.

Trouble at work can bring on depression, or can be a symptom of it. Besides addressing mental health care directly, CWA tries to negotiate with employers to minimize our members' stress: contracts, for instance, that let workers use flex time or take vacation in a two-hour block to pick up children or go to doctors' appointments; language that protects members from abusive monitoring practices in call centers; provisions to limit forced overtime.

When the feelings of sadness and depression persist beyond two weeks, it's important to get an evaluation. And if you ever have suicidal thoughts, get help immediately. Your employee break rooms, as well as your union halls, should have phone numbers for the assistance program prominently posted.

GWEND JOHNSON
Johnson is CWA's human rights director.

Many booklets and other materials about depression are available on the National Institute of Mental Health website at www.nimh.nih.gov. Click on "Health Information" and then "Depression."