Mental Health Challenges in the Workplace to Ensure ADA Compliance
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Speaker : SUSAN STRAUSS
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When : Thursday, December 11, 2025
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Time : 01 : 00 PM EST
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Dr. Susan Strauss is a national and international
speaker, trainer, and consultant. Her specialty areas include
management/leadership development, organization development,
communication, and harassment and bullying. She trains and consults with
business, education, healthcare, law, and government organizations from
both the public and private sectors. Susan has held positions in
training, organization development, and management, which enable her to
use her multitude of real-life experiences to draw on in her training
sessions and organization development consulting. She has presented to
thousands of people during her career and to a variety of audiences and
has received outstanding evaluations.
Dr.
Strauss has authored over 30 book chapters, books, and articles in
professional journals. She has been featured on 20/20, CBS Evening News,
and other national and international television and radio programs as
well as interviewed for newspaper and journal articles such as the Times
of London, Lawyers Weekly, and Harvard Education Newsletter.
Susan
has presented at international conferences in Botswana, Egypt,
Thailand, Israel, and the U.S. She has consulted with professionals
from other countries such as Bali, Lebanon, England, Australia, Canada,
and St. Maartin. She has her doctorate in organizational leadership, is a
registered nurse with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and human
services, a master’s degree in community health, and a professional
certificate in training and development.
Employers are seeing more mental health issues in their workforce than ever before. COVID has enhanced mental health concerns even more. Each year, 1 in 5 adults is stricken with a mental illness (National Institute of Mental Health), making mental illness an everyday reality for many of your employees. Yet only 1 in 3 people seek help with their illness. The ADA, HIPAA, FMLA, and most states’ human/civil rights departments dictate how employers deal with employees with mental health problems. Privacy laws create challenges for employers to determine how serious a situation is and whether an employee poses a danger (though those with a mental illness pose no more risk of violence than those without a mental illness).
Examples of the most common psychological disorders include major depression and dysthymia, bipolar disorder, anxiety, schizophrenia, and an array of personality disorders. Those individuals with depressions have 2.5 times the risk of on-the-job injury. Workplace depression results in 200 million lost days annually. The disease is common, debilitating, and the number one cause of disability worldwide. Employers lose an estimated $52 billion annually in loss of productivity and insurance payments.
In 2016, the EEOC resolved 5000 disability-based claims dealing with mental health conditions, costing employers approximately $20 million. With the increase in claims came an EEOC newly released Guidance on Mental Health Discrimination, which is addressed to employees informing them of their employment rights under the ADA. At one point, the EEOC received 6000 complaints dealing with long-COVID alone.
Workplaces can and should play a significant role in minimizing their employees’ mental health risks. Employee stress levels continue to rise as more and more employees spend more and more hours at work without an increase in pay or benefits. Burnout and depression, particularly among millennials and millennial women, are reported more than any other generation.
Who Should Attend
- All employees
- HR professionals and managers
Why Should You Attend
- To differentiate mental health from mental illness
- To discuss the most frequent mental health conditions with emphasis on depression, anxiety, and personality disorders
- To identify the demographic groups most at risk for mental health issues
- To examine the myths of mental illness
- To differentiate between personality traits and personality disorders
- To list the signs of possible mental health issues
- To explore the costs of mental illness to U.S. businesses
- To outline U.S. mental illness statistics
- To define “current”, “past”, and “perceived” disabilities
- To explain mental illness as an ADA-protected disability
- To describe the interactive process required by the ADA
- To explore the accommodations required by the ADA
- To examine the role of the workplace in creating a healthy environment
- To combat the negative stigma of mental illness in the workplace
- To generate a workplace culture of well-being
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$249.00
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