Depression is a major mental health issue in America. But it
is also, increasingly, a major workplace issue. A landmark 2003 study
draws the sobering conclusion that depression costs employers $44
billion a year in lost productivity alone. Those are strictly indirect
costs; they don’t even begin to reflect medical costs.
The vast majority of that $44 billion loss in productivity
comes not from absenteeism due to the disorder. It’s the product
of so-called presenteeism, the many people with depression showing up
for work but not functioning at anywhere near full
capacity—failing to return phone calls, turning in poor-quality
work, missing deadlines altogether, not following up on new business
leads, being paralyzed with indecision, inability to face work at all,
coming in late, leaving early, or not even returning from lunch,
difficulty getting along with coworkers, withdrawing from the social
environment at work.
Absenteeism, presenteeism, $44 billion—these are all
abstractions. Depression, however, always wears a human face—the
face of Mary Jo West, for example. A broadcast journalist, West became
the first TV anchorwoman in Phoenix, in 1976. She produced
award-winning features. She was a celebrity around town, instantly
recognizable to everyone. Within a year, the pressure of breaking
barriers along with her perfectionist professionalism collided with a
deep vein of vulnerability.
West’s story is perhaps unusual because of the
visibility. But in many ways it is business at its most usual.
Depression affects 5 million American working women—21 percent of
women in the workplace.
Shortly after college, I began working for KOOL Television, a CBS
affiliate that was the number one station in Phoenix. In 1976, the
longtime solo anchor—who had one of the highest ratings in the
country, because his time slot was right after Walter Cronkite—was
suddenly told that this young blonde woman was going to sit next to him.
There was hell for me to pay. He made my life difficult. For six years I
sat next to a man who despised my being next to him. At an anniversary
party a couple of months ago he even admitted, “I didn’t need
her; I had a fifty share!” I don’t think he ever got over it.
But when I left, he said goodbye to me on the air: “This is the
hardest-working person I’ve ever met, and she’s earned my
respect.”
I was very visible. When Arizona State University did a survey
asking: “What person do you trust most in TV news?” Walter
Cronkite came in first, and I came in second. I was so proud of that,
because I was everywhere, doing a lot of groundbreaking work. I did a
series on rape in which my co-anchor didn’t even want to say the
word, because he didn’t like it. I actually went into a prison and
interviewed rapists, something that had never been done before. I did the
first series on incest, the first on domestic violence.
In 1980, satellite technology evolved to the point where a local
anchor could cover a national story and send back reports. I was sent
with a cameraperson to the Democratic Convention in Detroit. That was
exciting. But because the station was trying to get the biggest bang for
its buck, I was asked to feed reports to KOOL radio as well as to KOOL TV
several times a day, including late at night and early in the morning. I
was working against a three-hour time difference. The only way to get
everything done was not sleep.
Perhaps another person in a different mindset might have said this
was a little too much. But I didn’t know how to tell them no. And
then the same thing repeated itself two weeks later when we went to
Madison Square Garden in New York, when Reagan was anointed.
Terrible things happen as a result of sleep deprivation. It kicked
off the only episode of mania I ever had. It was a nightmare. I got back
to Phoenix, left my husband and lived in the Biltmore Hotel. From
September through November, I was a totally different person in a totally
different lifestyle. It was frightening, not only for me but for my
colleagues. I went from being this girl from Georgia who was very Baptist
to a kind of wild woman. I bought another house. Sometimes I was driving
around at 4 a.m. and getting to see a whole other side of Phoenix. I
remember meeting new friends at 4 am at a coffee shop.
To this day, when I run into people who were in my life during that
time, I feel great shame. The other day, a woman said, “Mary Jo, I
remember you were kind of living out of your car, we were riding at 1,000
miles an hour, you opened up your trunk and there were all these clothes
there. We just didn’t know what to do with you. We’re just so
glad you survived.”
At the same time I was anchoring three newscasts a day. When the
red light went on, I was totally professional. The mania gave me energy
and ideas, some of which were good and some of which were off the wall. I
was having delusions. I had done a series with the Air Force. I thought
they were spying on me. My work in some ways was suffering. I remember
putting together a behind-the-scenes piece on the Democratic convention.
Afterward, the producer was embarrassed; it was too personal.
