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Serious insight for serious situations.

Serious insight for serious situations.

The Young and the Restless: Soap opera lessons for real life employers in dealing with misconduct linked to mental illness and addiction

On occasion1, I tune into a longstanding television soap opera called, The Young and the Restless, as a distraction from the issues of everyday life.  Most recently however, the soap opera did not act as a distraction, but rather reminded me of the societal challenges faced by employees who suffer from mental illness.  As an

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More isn’t always better: What can happen when employers receive too much medical information

In a case reported by the CBC last week, a Yellowknife woman said that she was distraught after a detailed report about her mental health was released to her employer.  The woman has a mental illness and agreed to a psychiatric assessment because she was seeking various workplace accommodations.  She says that she never agreed

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Depression + Dismissal = Damages: Lessons learned the hard way on how to handle mental illness accommodation in the workplace

Mental illness can be a taboo subject that employers shy away from discussing. Mental Illness accommodation often makes employers cringe because they either do not recognize a need to accommodate or do not know how to engage in appropriate and necessary accommodation. In the recent Northwest Territories case of Thorson v. The Government of the

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TIFF: Life imitating art?

I was lucky enough to be invited to attend a TIFF Premiere this past weekend for the film “Welcome to Me”.  In case you’re not familiar with the film, it tells the story of a woman, Alice, who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder and wins $86 million in the lottery. The film focuses on the

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