Please do not put words in my mouth. What I stated was that: “People with a history of depression and suicide attempts should not be licensed to provide daycare, unless it can be established to a near certainty that they are no longer and will no longer be that way.” That is not a lifetime ban.
As far as the burden of proof goes, it would be established by expert opinion - - e.g. the person’s treating psychiatrist or such other professional. If the person is not able to garner such an opinion, then that person should look for a different job that does not put children at risk.
But the matter at hand is not simply one of a person on meds for depression. It is a matter in which the depressed person tried to kill herself twice – in short, she was not capable of being responsible for her own life. People who are not responsible for their own lives should not be left in a position where they are responsible for other people’s lives, particularly young children. The question then is what level of proof of adequate management or recovery should be provided before such as person should again be put in a position of trust.
Before putting a repeated suicide attempt in a position of trust, one should look at the nature of the job, the nature and degree of the illness, and the avenues for mitigation that could permit employment while still ensuring protection of the public and reasonable job performance.
Are you intending to be saying something akin to “Well, I am a teacher and I have a psychiatric history and my employers know about it, and it simply is not the problem you say it could be”? Or was it more intended as “Well, I am a teacher with a known psychiatric history, so if community attitudes really swung around towards ‘crazy people shouldn’t be teaching our kids’, I’d be in the crosshairs, so I found your post interesting” ?
Mainly the former, not least because of the sheer numbers of other crazy people I’ve encountered in the profession and in everyday life. Their opinions form a sizable part of ‘community attitudes’, too.
GorillaMan, I agree that we’re in no imminent danger.
But as you can see from the posts in this very thread, there are those who would say, at least with regards to some professions, anything from “I’d want to see some evidence that this person would not be a problem” through “I’d say no job unless really compelling proof can be presented that this person is not going to be a problem” and onwards to “people like that have got no business working in that sort of profession”.
That’s on this board, which, to the extent that it varies from the typical, is probably less inclined to hold uninformed and censorious attitudes.
That’s with regards to day care, which, if not identical to “teacher”, is not a throw of too many stones. It’s not an unreasonable comparison.
I think what’s sparking a lot of these comments is fallacious thinking rather than actual opinions on mental health. Person X has demonstrated themselves to be unsuitable to be trusted with children, Person X has a health history including Y and Z, therefore others with Y and/or Z in their history should be trusted no more than Person X, or even treated as incipient cases of the same.
That fallacy needs to be challenged directly, reminding people just how common depression and suicide attempts are among people without any of the other problems exhibited by Person X, before presenting the case for these not in themselves being a justifiable cause of discrimination.
No, I fully agree, it’s a very reasonable comparison.
A person who tried to kill herself a couple of times would be out of the running based on ground (1).
For this particular job, should this particular ground be changed so that despite a history of suicide attempts, a person could pilot a passenger airliner, and if so, what would be the specific conditions that you would impose? No suicide attempts in the last decade? No suicide attempts in the last two years? No suicide attempts in the last month? No license restriction even if there are presently ongoing suicide attempts? No license restriction provided there is ongoing treatment and there has not been a suicide attempt for a certain period of time? No license restriction provided there is ongoing monitoring and there has not been a suicide attempt for a certain period of time? Have at it – come up with a regulation that will mitigate the matter so as to protect the public. By having any regulation, be it tight or loose, or by failing to have any regulation, you will be on a slippery slope. You cannot avoid being on a slippery slope, so you had best deal with it head on in giving very careful consideration to the regulations you put in place or do not put in place.
Now let’s move on to other jobs. Take that process of looking at the nature of the job, the nature and degree of the illness, and the avenues for mitigation that could permit employment while still ensuring protection of the public and reasonable job performance, and apply it to every job on your list. That is how to go about handling the slippery slope argument. Some combinations of jobs and illnesses would hardly rate a blip, others could be mitigated, and still others would be in such conflict as to not be reconcilable.
Missed the edit timeout: I should have said ‘not necessarily correct’. Suicide attempts by themselves are not automatically an indication of any one condition, nor indeed is mental illness necessarily present at all for attempts on one’s life to be made. In this case, the information we have is of a diagnosis of depression, not of a personality disorder.
People get well. Many with treatment and many without. This is unenforceable and paranoid and very Big Brotherish. Life’s a crapshoot. Sometimes you have to leave your children in the hands of people you don’t really know. Like, every day, once they’re in kindergarten. You just don’t know.
I have not suggested that people don’t get well, and I have not suggested that they shoud be given the boot from emplyment once they are well. What I stated was that: “People with a history of depression and suicide attempts should not be licensed to provide daycare, unless it can be established to a near certainty that they are no longer and will no longer be that way.”
As far as unenforceable, paranoid and very Big Brotherish goes, I can’t speak for where you live, but I can assure you that where I live, it is professional misconduct for a kindergarten teacher to teach while while adversely affected by any dysfunction that the she ought to know impairs her ability to practise or, if she failed to follow recommended treatement. http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/regs/english/elaws_regs_970437_e.htm
So if not (a)1 “personality disorder” then (c)1 “mental condition.” Comes out the same in the end in that people who try to kill themselves repeatedly are not permitted to pilot airliners.
Really what it comes down to is when a person tries to kill herself repeatedly, it sends up a big red flag. I submit that such a big red flag should put a hold on the person being or remaining in a position of trust until that person establishes that there really is no need for concern, rather than the regulating agency have to prove causality between the big red flag and danger to the public. Better to err on the side of caution in protecting the public, while still giving the ill person the opportunity to make a case, rather than err on the side of protecting the ill person’s right to employment while possibily putting the public at risk despite a big red flag flapping in the wind.
Mental illness is often tremendously complex, so when it comes to jobs regulated in the interest of public safety (be it a commercial airline pilot or a day care provider or any number of other jobs regulated for public safety) I would prefer that the onus be placed on the person seeking employment to meet a burden of proof rather than for the employer to have to make the call based on what limited information the employer may have access to. In other words, a higher burden of proof for the job seeker than the job denier.
Let’s apply that to the commercial airline pilot. There is a relatively low burden of proof on the job denier – if a pilot tries to kill herself, that suffices to meet the burden of proof, such that even although it is not proven that the pilot would be a danger to the passengers, there is enough of a correlation between suicide attempts and suicidal pilots having crashed planes that the regulation is a reasonable one in protecting public safety, despite suicides only rarely killing others at the same time. The stakes are just too high to leave the burden to the employer to have to figure out if the pilot with a history of suicides really is a risk or not, and then prove it to a high degree. Does this have shades of “guilty until proven innocent.” Yes. Does this fail to be strictly logical by making decisions based on occasional correlation rather than certain causation? Yes. But the world is not so black and white. We have to make very important decisions on limited information, so when it comes to public safety, I prefer to err on the side of caution.
Now let’s apply this to the matter at hand – the day care operator who drugged the young children. Based on her history of clinical depression and two suicide attempts, I would expect her ticket to be refused or pulled until she could establish to a near certainty that she would no longer be that way. Since most people who commit suicide do not harm others, I realize that the odds are that a suicidal person would be unlikely to harm children in her care, but by the same token one would be remiss to ignore the correlation between some suicides and the harming of third parties, such that in my opinion, she should not have held her ticket without first establishing that either there really was near certainty of the children not coming to harm, or that through mitigated, for example, by monitoring her mental health, supervising her interactions with the children, and prohibiting her from administering medication to children, there would be near certainty of the children not coming to harm.
But you’re not talking about someone who’s actively ill. You are asking for a guarantee that a person will never be ill again. It’s impossible to provide that guarantee.
Wait. This woman, who has a history of mental problems and attempted suicide drugs kids in her care and we think she should not be banned from running a daycare for all time?
WTF? Even without the hx of mental illness, this woman should never be in authority over children again. Ever.
Ok, I get it–you are extrapolating and wanting to know if we agree that in general that this is a good thing. All I can say is --I dunno. I would think that it would have to be a case by case basis, no? Some schizophrenics are well controlled and function fine. Others not so much–and I know it’s not just a compliance issue, I’m not saying that. I know she’s not schizophrenic, I’m just using an example. I don’t think her hx of suicidal attempts has anything to do directly with her poor decision making skills re the kids. I mean, both shout “I can’t cope” but in different ways…
In a case like the one described, though, the safety of the children, IMO, trumps any “rights” the mentally ill person has to a job. Perhaps if someone like this woman worked with someone (who wouldn’t condone something like oh, drugging kids) or had random checks of some kind (expensive and we all know how well the state does stuff like this). I don’t know the answer. I hate see the mentally ill marginalized, but I cannot put them first in this scenario.
Well, you’re splitting hairs. How would you establish “certain” knowledge vs. “near certain” knowledge that she’d never be sick again? How would you even define it?
I agree that THIS woman should not work in daycare because she drugged the children. That cannot be compared to a mentally ill person that doesn’t harm her charges. Like I said, we have no idea what issues the people in our childrens’ lives have.
And on such evidence we award you the title of Honorary Psychiatrist. Congratulations.
What ‘burden of proof’ are you actually demanding? Evidence that they will, and will not, do anything bad, ever? You really have a very naive view, not only of mental health, but of human nature. Sorry to be so blunt.
Finally, back on track.
Such as written evidence from health professionals, as was supplied, and was mentioned in the OP.
Just because it’s a long sentence, it doesn’t always make sense. I don’t know what you’re actually saying here.
But neither Aureli nor Assistant District Attorney Joseph Waldorf could answer whether the state Office of Children and Family Services knew about and considered Powers’ mental status when it licensed her in 1999 to run Guardian Angel Day Care at 429 Clay Ave.
So I wonder. Maybe there were other cases where she acted inappropriately and we don’t know about them, or maybe she did just great for 9 years and then snapped. The answer to that question is important, I think, but we may never know.
Also, with regard to Rubystreak’s comment:
Can I ask what might be a really stupid question? How would your potential employers ever know that you were clinically depressed in the past? I mean, if you haven’t been hospitalized nor attempted suicide, I’d think it was just between you, your doctor, and whatever close personal friends or family you shared that information with. I don’t see how it would prevent you from getting a job.
I wonder if employers could know via the health insurance. I haven’t changed jobs in awhile and I’m fuzzy on it, but I think I was asked some health questions on my job application. To some extent, they need to know—if you keel over, it would be useful for them to know you’re diabetic, for instance. Do employers these days ask any health questions before hiring? Once you’re hired in, do they get any feedback on which employees are using which services (they’re paying part or all of the premiums and some accounting may be due them)?
Our current insurance companies know about every doctor visit, every diagnosis, and every treatment we’ve ever had during their coverage. Do they have medical records transferred from the last insurer when we start a new job, e.g. to confirm pre-existing conditions?
I don’t believe that was the message of the OP, or of subsequent responders. I think this started with the implication in the article that a person who is clinically depressed should not be given a day care license. Clinical depression, by itself, should not be an automatic disqualifier.
And I am almost certain no one is saying that this particular lady should be allowed to supervise children.
I know–I was half fooling around. What I am saying is that the article linked to does not serve as an example of why such refusal is a poor decision. Even without the mental illness, this woman should never get authority over kids again. She’s hardly a poster child for successful employment of the mentally ill. I hope she gets help and I hope she does well, but trust her with kids I will not.
If the parameters are only should clinically depressed people be denied employment such as daycare provider, I still hold that there is not enough information to make that call. As I said, it’s such an individual thing, it should be decided on a case by case basis. There is too much variance among those who have been so diagnosed (myself among them).