The International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, has just published my article, “On anger, shock, fear, and trauma: therapeutic jurisprudence as a response to dignity denials in public policy.” Through May 18, you may click here to obtain free access to the article.
This piece is not about employment law and policy, but it embraces a relevant theme, namely, how the making and content of public policy can either advance or deny our dignity. Here’s the article abstract:
This article asserts that when policymaking processes, outcomes, and implementations stoke fear, anxiety, and trauma, they often lead to denials of human dignity. It cites as prime examples the recent actions of America’s current federal government concerning immigration and health care. As a response, I urge that therapeutic jurisprudence should inform both the processes of policymaking and the design of public policy, trained on whether human dignity, psychological health, and well-being are advanced or diminished. I also discuss three methodologies that will help to guide those who want to engage legislation in a TJ-informed manner. Although achieving this fundamental shift will not be easy, we have the raw analytical and intellectual tools to move wisely in this direction.
Although it’s a scholarly journal piece, it’s relatively short (10 pp.) and accessible to non-legal folks.
The article appears as part of a special issue honoring Prof. David Wexler (U. Puerto Rico/U. Arizona), a co-founder of the therapeutic jurisprudence movement. It was co-edited by Profs. Amy Campbell (U. Memphis) and Kathy Cerminara (Nova Southeastern U.). The journal is hosted by the International Academy of Law and Mental Health.
Boston Globe: Two important features on workplace bullying
March 18, 2019 By David Yamada in health care, power & abuse in society, workplace bullying, mobbing, and abuse Tags: health care, power & abuse in society, workplace bullying	Leave a comment
Over the weekend, the Boston Globe published two lengthy features on workplace bullying. Both are detailed and compelling and worthy of our close attention.
Bullied in the state prison system
The Globe‘s Jenna Russell goes in depth on the story of former corrections officer Marycatherin DeFazio, who suffered years of savage bullying and sexual harassment while working for the Massachusetts state prison system. It is a terrible account of repeated verbal battering, sexual vulgarities, defamatory rumor-mongering, physical assault, and abandonment by co-workers that left her at severe risk of harm. DeFazio’s reports of the abuse to prison officials made no difference.
Like so many stories of severe, ongoing bullying and abuse at work, this one cannot be easily summarized. Russell does a superb job of explaining the personal and organizational dynamics, sharing plenty of nuances that are part of many bullying situations. She also makes brief mention of efforts to enact the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill here in Massachusetts. You can read the entire story here; registration may be necessary.
Bullied in the process of becoming a doctor
Dr. Amitha Kalaichandran, a Canadian resident physician and medical journalist, provides an in-depth look at bullying and mobbing behaviors at the residency stage of medical training:
THERE’S NO QUESTION that bullying is endemic in medical education. One study revealed that about half of residents and fellows in the U.S. reported being bullied, most often by their attending physicians. Canadian researchers found that 78 percent of residents surveyed reported being bullied and harassed in their training, often by attendings or program directors.
The mistreatment can be so severe that suicides of residents have been associated with it. And if the abuse alone isn’t bad enough, consider that it also negatively affects patient care.
This piece, too, is hard to capture in a few snippets and thus merits a full read. You can read it in full here; again, registration may be necessary.
In December 2017, the Globe became probably the first major newspaper in the U.S. to put a feature about workplace bullying on its front page, when it ran Beth Teitell’s excellent overview of workplace bullying and its impact on workers and workplaces.
This weekend’s coverage took the focus into a deeper level of understanding. I have to say that I hopefully anticipated both features. I provided background information to both Russell and Kalaichandran as they were preparing their articles, and I could tell that they “got it” in terms of grasping the complexities of bullying, mobbing, and related behaviors at work. This was borne out by the quality of their published pieces.
We need more media coverage of this caliber in order to expand public education of the human carnage wrought by bullying, mobbing, and abuse in the workplace. Hat’s off to the Globe for providing two excellent examples this weekend.
Dear readers, later this year the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, the peer-reviewed journal of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health, will publish my article, “On Anger, Shock, Fear, and Trauma: Therapeutic Jurisprudence as a Response to Dignity Denials in Public Policy.” Here’s the abstract:
If you’d like to read my author’s draft of the piece in a pdf, you may download it without charge from my Social Science Research Network page, here.
Genetic testing for workplace wellness program participants: Coming soon to a company near you?
March 15, 2017 By David Yamada in diversity and discrimination, employment and labor law, health care, politics, power & abuse in society, science Tags: diversity and discrimination, employment and labor law, health care, politics, power & abuse in society, science	4 Comments
Ten jumping jacks and a blood sample, please
It sounds like something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel, but Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are advancing a bill that would allow employers to require employees to undergo genetic testing in order to participate in voluntary workplace wellness programs. Workers who refuse may face significantly higher health care premiums as a penalty. Lena Sun reports for the Washington Post about the proposed Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act:
Employers could impose hefty penalties on employees who decline to participate in genetic testing as part of workplace wellness programs if a bill approved by a U.S. House committee this week becomes law.
…Under the Affordable Care Act [a/k/a Obamacare], employers are allowed to discount health insurance premiums by up to 30 percent — and in some cases 50 percent — for employees who voluntarily participate in a wellness program where they’re required to meet certain health targets.
…But the House legislation would allow employers to impose penalties of up to 30 percent of the total cost of the employee’s health insurance on those [wellness program participants] who choose to keep such information private.
Currently the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) prohibits employers and ensurers from using genetic information for discriminatory purposes. In addition, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination on the basis of a recognized disability, which could be identified through genetic testing.
As Sun reports, the dozens of organizations that oppose this bill — which include “the American Academy of Pediatrics, AARP, March of Dimes and the National Women’s Law Center” — argue that the proposed legislation would substantially undermine the basic privacy protections provided by GINA and the ADA.
The bill has passed through the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, with all Republicans voting yes and all Democrats voting no.
If enacted into law, this means that if you want to participate in a workplace-sponsored program to stop smoking, lose weight, or learn mindfulness practices, then you can be required to give your genetic information to your employer as a condition for doing so. If you don’t want to provide a genetic sample but still want to join the wellness program, then your employer can boost your health insurance premiums by up to 30 percent.
The bill itself is alarming enough, but the door it opens is positively frightening. Even if it doesn’t become law, the fact that it has been quickly ushered through a House committee by a pure party line vote sends a disturbing signal about the kind of policy proposals that are holding sway in Washington D.C. today. These are not normal times, and we should all be paying close attention.
NPR report: Future doctors depict mentors as monsters
December 22, 2015 By David Yamada in education and learning, health care, workplace bullying, mobbing, and abuse, workplace incivility Tags: education and learning, health care, workplace bullying, mobbing, and abuse, workplace incivility	Leave a comment
Earlier this month, health journalist Julie Rovner reported for NPR on a class of medical students who were invited to draw comics depicting their training, workplaces, and relationships with mentors/supervisors. It’s not a pretty picture:
How stressful is medical training? So bad that in a class that encouraged medical students to express their feelings by drawing comics, nearly half of them depicted their supervisors as monsters, researchers say.
Students imagined the workplace as dank dungeons, represented supervising physicians as fiendish, foul-mouthed monsters, and themselves as sleep-deprived zombies walking through barren post-apocalyptic landscapes, the study authors, Daniel R. George and Dr. Michael Green, wrote Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.
In one particularly harrowing image, a student “depicted his supervising physician screaming at the medical team, causing one intern to urinate herself moments before having her head bitten off for possessing too little information about a patient,” the authors wrote.
This is yet more evidence that the health care workplace is a troubled one. In fact, last week I shared the story of a nurse who attempted suicide after enduring a prolonged course of bullying and harassment.
Because psychological abuse at work tends to roll downhill, it’s also likely that some of these doctors-in-training will take cues from what they’ve experienced and treat their colleagues and co-workers in a similar manner. In an August 2012 piece, I suggested that professional schools can be incubators for workplace bullying:
It has long been my belief that the seeds of workplace bullying are planted in professional schools that prepare people to enter occupations such as law and medicine.
You start with ambitious young people who (1) are used to being heralded as academic stars; (2) do not have a lot of life experience; and (3) tend to be driven, Type A achievers. You then put them in high-pressured educational environments that emphasize technical knowledge and skills and a lot of “left-brain” logical thinking. These degree programs don’t place a lot of emphasis on interpersonal skills and the development of emotional intelligence.
You then unleash them unto the world of work. Uh oh.
That post includes a summary of a New York Times piece about a resident doctor who terrified the medical students with his explosive behavior.
December 14, 2015 By David Yamada in health care, psychology and work, workplace bullying, mobbing, and abuse Tags: health care, psychology and work, workplace bullying, mobbing, and abuse	5 Comments
We use the term “suicidal ideation” to describe frequent thoughts about suicide, especially for those at risk. But tossing in a clinical word like “ideation” has a way of sanitizing the term and drawing attention away from its core essence: Circumstances in someone’s life can be so challenging, difficult, or dire that they are thinking about suicide.
We know that workplace bullying can be associated with suicidal thoughts. Not every instance, thank goodness, but in some instances, yes. In fact, earlier this week, Dr. Gary Namie of the Workplace Bullying Institute shared this comment, publicly posted to the WBI site, from a nurse who attempted suicide after experiencing a prolonged course of workplace mistreatment.
I’m an RN, I resigned unwillingly Sept.18 from the Veterans Affair. Its difficult for me to determine if I was experiencing bullying, harassment and or discrimination but the end result an attempt to end my life July, 30th, 2015, spending 12 days in the hospital.
I was diagnosed with PTSD and medicated for nightmares while hospitalized. I’m or I was a well functioning Bipolar II. I endured (from a newly arrived nurse manager, moreover the was not my manager) bullying/harassment for 14 months,mid Jan 2014-Mar 2015 and on March 26th 2015 – June 17th she and another official came at me with a vengeance. On June 16th 2015, around 4:30 pm after entering human resources and reading false accusations, a co-worker’s description of me and a sticky on top of the charges “AL, can we ask for fitness of duty, reprimand or suspension” (I had no write-ups prior to these false charges) I started crying, I was devastated, shocked.
. . . I can’t believe or comprehend these unfathomable events, I’m lost. How can this all be happening. I suffered/suffer fear, anxiety, terror, pain, uselessness, worthlessness, impending doom, shame and guilt!!!!!!. My livelihood was taken from me.
There are at least two important points worth drawing from this personal account. First, while suicidal thoughts usually cannot be traced to a single factor, severe bullying and mistreatment at work can be among the causes. Second, we must continue to pay close attention to worklife matters in healthcare workplaces, too many of which are stressful, dysfunctional places to earn a living.
Over the years I’ve written a lot about the healthcare workplace and about suicide. Here are some pieces if you would like to learn more:
World Suicide Prevention Day, 2014: Ties to work, bullying, and the economy (2014)
Suicide and the Great Recession: Will we heed the tragic warnings? (2013)
University of Cincinnati conference examines workplace violence, bullying, and incivility in healthcare (2012)
Cheryl Dellasega’s “When Nurses Hurt Nurses” (2012)
Nursing as a Calling: Aspirations and Realities (2010)
First in a four-part series on workplace bullying in healthcare (2009)
Suicide prevention resource in the U.S.
If you or someone you care about is having suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached around the clock at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). In addition, you can go to a hospital emergency room and ask for help.