[last year's girl]

I hadn’t been following the case of Christine Laird, who was being pursued for damages by her former employer Cheltenham Borough Council, but when the news that the local authority had lost their claim hit the legal feeds yesterday morning I couldn’t help but pay attention.

The issue at stake was whether the former managing director had “fraudulently or negligently withheld” details of her past history of depressive illness from the local authority when she had applied for the position, and centred on a pre-employment medical questionnaire. When asked if she enjoyed good health, Mrs Laird answered in the affirmative – and when asked whether she had any ongoing medical conditions which would affect any offer of employment, she answered “no”.

Mrs Laird had suffered three episodes of “depression with associated anxiety” between 1997 and 2001, but claimed to be in good health at the time of her 2002 appointment. She left her position in August 2005 on an ill-health pension, after taking sick leave on full pay from June 2004.

For obvious reasons, it is difficult to write about this case objectively. Had you asked me six months ago, I would have said that from my perspective the position was cut-and-dried: why should one be expected to disclose a past, treated health condition on a form which asks about ongoing conditions? Particularly one which, despite awareness-raising by mental health charities such as Mind and popular estimates that one in four of us will experience conditions such as depression at some point in our lives, still carries such stigma. A survey by the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development last year found that 60 percent of employers would not consider taking on someone with a mental health problem – that’s a pretty big risk to take for disclosing something which is past having any impact on a person’s ability to do a particular job. The Disability Discrimination Act of course contains protection on paper, insisting that employers take “such steps as [are] reasonable” to accommodate conditions which include depression, but in this case the authority were willing to argue that due to the nature of the role they could not insulate Mrs Laird or any other applicant from stress.

Of course, that was before I found myself being treated for an unexpected relapse in my own depressive condition, so my delight at the verdict may be construed as mere soapboxing. Mr Justice Hamblen opined that if anybody was to blame, it was whoever wrote the “poorly drafted” questionnaire that Mrs Laird filled in – her answers were not false or misleading “given the terms of the questions”, and she did not have an impairment under either the Mental Health Act or the Disability Discrimination Act.

Coming on the same day as a friend of mine was subjected to a stressful employment review relating to absence around her own mental health problems, I cannot help but sympathise. A supportive working environment means I’ve had it pretty lucky, but the fact remains that as the country slides deeper into recession redundancies, financial worries and increased pressure to perform on reduced or minimal resources could be leading to a mental health timebomb. A verdict against Mrs Laird would have sent out a strong signal to those perhaps already struggling with, or trying to hide, anxiety or depression from colleagues, preventing them from asking for the help they need for their own sakes – as well as that of their employer.