A Labour Law Perspective on Employees with Depression

Abstract

Depression currently affects over 121 million people worldwide and will likely be the world‟s second leading contributor to the global disease burden by 2020. As depression generally starts at the average age of 25, it very often spills over into a country‟s labour force. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines depression as „a common mental disorder that … can become chronic or recurrent and lead to substantial impairments in an individual‟s ability to take care of his or her everyday responsibilities‟. When this definition is compared with the criteria for „disability‟ in terms of South Africa‟s Code of Good Practice: Key Aspects on the Employment of People with Disabilities, depression does seem to qualify as a disability in the workplace in certain circumstances. However, through a comparative legal study of the disability-related statutes found in the United Kingdom, including the 2010 Equality Act and the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act, the South African legislation is found to be lacking in the extent of protection afforded to both employees suffering from depression, and their employers. Even though the abovementioned Code is a useful guide to promote fair treatment for people with disabilities, South Africa seems to lack documents with sufficient force of law that are dedicated to disability and that specifically provide for depression. Currently, depression seems to be treated as the stepchild of disability, enjoying little official recognition as justification for illness and/or incapacity. Thus, this paper proposes that the United Kingdom‟s legislation be used as a model to draft further statutes for South Africa that would assist in more effectively protecting employees with depression from unfair discrimination, while also watching over the economic interests of the employer.