The Issue: Talking About Depression at Work

It took courage for a journalist to reveal her illness to her colleagues, but it ultimately eased her mind

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Diane Coutu had suffered from depression for most of her life, but the revelation that compelled her to seek treatment occurred, surprisingly enough, in the workplace.

While growing up, Coutu coped with periodic feelings of sadness and hopelessness well enough to become a high achiever—captain of her high school's cheerleading squad, a Rhodes scholar, and a Yale graduate with a degree in literature.

By the time she was working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal Europe ("NWS"), however, the problem had grown to full-fledged clinical depression, a debilitating illness.

Clinical depression is not merely a matter of feeling sad or depressed for a few days and then rebounding. The National Institute of Mental Health describes the illness as having symptoms that can include insomnia or excessive sleeping, overeating or appetite loss, loss of interest in "activities once pleasurable," difficulty concentrating, feelings of worthlessness, fatigue, and decreased energy, and thoughts of suicide or suicide attempts. The poet Emily Dickinson said depression felt like "a funeral in the brain."

"At times, I was unable to do any work or get out of bed," Coutu says. "I don't like to talk about the worst of it. It's a very bleak situation."

Offering Counsel

Around this time, her boss at WSJE, Norman Pearlstine, asked her to sit down for a talk.

"Norm noticed I was in trouble—I never told him," Coutu recalls. "He said: 'I think you need medical help,' and that if I needed time away, he'd always keep a job open for me so long as he was still with the Journal. It lifted a huge burden from me. And it destigmatized my problems."

With the help of antidepressants and psychoanalysis, Coutu was able to return to an office job a few years later, although by that time she wasn't as interested in reporting. Instead, she got a job as a communications specialist at McKinsey, a global management consulting firm.

When she opened up to her bosses about her depression at her new job, she once again received understanding. "McKinsey is tough and demanding, but it is a company that really stands up for its people," she says. "It was a very humane place to work."

Later, as a senior editor at the Harvard Business Review (and an eventual contributor to its blog at harvardbusiness.org), Coutu made the decision to let on about her depression there, in 1998. "I realized I needed to talk about who I was, and having depression was part of who I was," she explains. "There was a coworker named David I was close to. I told him over dinner that I had depression. He said something like, 'Fine. Are you going to order dessert?' He was unfazed."

Understanding from Colleagues

Likewise, a co-worker named Sarah, who started her job on the same day Coutu did, was understanding when Coutu told her about her depression. "We started out at the same job level, and then she got promoted to management, so I never had to 'come out' to my manager."

On Mar. 13, 2008, Coutu went truly public, by writing about her situation in her blog. She admits in her entry that at times she has regretted the decision to reveal her problems to her colleagues. She worries there will be negative repercussions down the road. Nonetheless, the overall benefits of letting go of the secrecy and isolation have made the disclosure worthwhile, she says.

Mitigating the risk of disclosure was Coutu's ability to keep pulling her weight on the job, depression or no. "I get very stressed out at times—that's part of depression," she says. "So I have my own way of getting work done, and people need to understand that. I do a lot of work at home, and I've made sacrifices in my personal life for my job. But I've always gotten my work done well and finished my projects on time."

She also acknowledges fate's hand in placing understanding co-workers in her path. "I've had so much luck, the sheer luck of meeting Norm Pearlstine and of going to McKinsey and ending up with the manager I have at HBR," she says. "When it comes to depression and the workplace, the smartest thing you can do is to be very lucky."

Indeed, good fortune aided Coutu's decision to disclose her illness. But what about other people with depression, people who don't work at a McKinsey or a Harvard? Should they risk going public with their depression on the job?

Rebecca Reisner is an editor at BusinessWeek.com .