Workplace bullying among mental health providers with lived experience of a mental health challenge.

Mental health care providers who have a personal lived experience of mental health challenges are valuable employees who may be vulnerable to workplace bullying, which causes harm both to these individuals and to their organizations. We used snowball sampling to survey 40 mental health professionals with lived experience about their history of workplace bullying and whether or not their lived experience was known ("out") or concealed ("closeted"). We found that our sample experienced workplace bullying at much higher rates than published samples from the general population. More than three-quarters of our sample reported having ever experienced bullying and almost half had been bullied in the past year. Furthermore, most of those who had ever experienced bullying reported having been closeted at the time. Further exploratory analyses identified some specific aspects of bullying that might be fruitful areas for future research. We conclude with implications for employee recruitment and retention, vocational rehabilitation, and organizational development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Disclosure of lived experience of mental illness in training: Reasons for disclosure.

Students in mental health (MH) professions often face MH symptoms themselves related to the stress of graduate training and have been shown to benefit from supportive mentoring. Little is known, however, about trainees who already have a mental illness, and how best to help them succeed. Snowball sampling was used to survey 35 MH professionals with lived experience of mental illness (LE), also known as "prosumers." The survey included questions about participants' past disclosure about mental illness when they were in a training role. Questions were also asked about participants' experience supervising or teaching students who had disclosed LE. The survey included quantitative and qualitative data. Of participants who disclosed experiences of mental illness during past training, most disclosed to a clinical supervisor, with the most common reason for disclosure being to seek social support. A majority (83%) of those who endorsed having a trainee disclose to them were "out" about their own LE at the time. The majority of participants (78%) indicated they would like accessible examples of how others had dealt with trainee disclosure to use as a tool in working with trainees. We conclude with implications for future research and resources on this topic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).