Blahs in the workplace: depression carries a high price, especially if not treated.

• Author: Nelson, Eric

The sales performance of Gayle has dropped three months in a row. She is a 36-year-old veteran account executive for your company, but seems almost listless, even careless. Appointments are forgotten, calls are missed and mistakes continue to increase in both frequency and severity.

When you call Gayle into your office to discuss the problem, she confesses to feeling "down" and having trouble eating and sleeping. She was sure it was a virus, but her doctor found nothing wrong. "It's probably just stress," Gayle concludes.

But sensing there's something more behind her slide in performance, you refer her to a doctor in your company's employee-assistance program. The diagnosis? Gayle suffers from depression--the quiet affliction that strikes some 10 million American workers every year, costing U.S. businesses as much as $43 billion annually in lost productivity and absenteeism.

It's all too real for a growing number of people in the work force, says Kirk Wheeler, crisis-line coordinator at St. Vincent Stress Center in Indianapolis. Over time, up to 20 percent of the population will suffer severe enough symptoms to qualify as having major depression.

"That's twice as many as are affected by alcoholism and chemical dependency," he continues. "It's a major problem for society, let alone business."

Fortunately, depression in the workplace is a problem that can be remedied fairly easily, Wheeler adds. "Depression has the virtue of being the most treatable mental illness," he says. "Through a combination of medication and therapy, 70 to 80 percent of people are successfully treated within a short period of time and return to full function. It's a condition that doesn't leave any lasting deficits in the employee or the employer."

Still, perhaps because of its historical stigma, mental health is one of the first areas typically cut in many companies' benefit plans--a move that ultimately may cost more than it saves.

"The acceptance of depression as a legitimate medical illness would be very helpful for business, but that acceptance is sometimes very lacking," says Dr. Gerald Kauffman, senior psychiatrist at Oaklawn Psychiatric Center in Goshen. "If depression is treated, the medical costs for that person--and the costs to the company in terms of lost productivity and absenteeism--are going to be much less than if the depression were not treated."

William McAdams with Mulberry Psychological and Counseling Associates in Evansville agrees that employers'...