Hedonic Costs, why it's understandable that people discriminate against mentally ill [View all]

[HereSince1628]

Ever wonder about how and why mental illness destroys life outside the home? Why, it costs you friends, employment, a place in the church choir, acceptance in the American Legion? Could this really be moving toward the answer? If it is, OMG! The mentally ill are -so- screwed.

Elizabeth Emen's argument in, The Sympathetic Discriminator: Mental Illness, Hedonic Costs, and the ADA 94 Geo. L.J. 399 (2006), is a paper on narrowing legal arguments in order to allow the ADA to protect mentally ill workers--the premise that all accomodations have costs and unless a job requires contact that can result in contagion that precludes a job being done, the ADA for the mentally ill will apply.

But, on its face, this bit of legal advocacy is a painful expose on why discrimination against the mentally ill is understandable, rational, and even deserves sympathy.

The reasoning hangs on recognizing the "reality" that mentally ill people make the people around them feel bad. That production of negative emotions among a workforce represents an emotional cost to fellow employees and for the employer, the so-called hedonic costs. Emens argues this is actually the core reason for discrimination against persons with mental disorders: emotional contagion of others caused by a mentally ill person -is real-. Interacting with a mentally ill person for even a short time will confer bad feelings.

So, the argument goes that traditional reasons for pressing employers to integrate workplaces with mentally ill cannot apply. Unlike fixes for inappropriate discriminatory racial or ethnic stereotypes, inappropriate attitudes cannot be 'fixed' by bringing together a mentally ill person with co-workers in the workplace, because, it seems, the attitude isn't all that inappropriate. Even if education and experience could remove unjustified animosity toward the mentally ill there remains that other reason for discrimination;others fear of and/or actual contamination with negative emotions exuded by the ill person. And emotional contagion is insidious and comes to bear on the persons in the closest relationships with the ill person. The closer a well person is to a person with mentally illness; the more likely the well person will be contaminated with negative feelings.

Wow, is that discouraging or what? Am I suffering hedonic contagion as a consequence of exposure to that argument or is it just a reflection my illness?