Workplace Mistreatment Affects Mental Health

Ashley Nixon and I were invited to write a chapter on workplace mistreatment for The Routledge Companion to Mental Health at Work. We both had been doing research on the topic for some time from a business management perspective, so mental health was a little different for us. The first question we answered was how workplace mistreatment affects mental health.

Workplace Mental Health

When we hear the term “mental health” we typically think about psychological disorders. Certainly disorders are an important aspect of the field, but mental health is not just about disorders. Mental health also refers to both positive and negative well-being at work and beyond. Many of the things we experience at work are distressing and can lead to negative emotions and feelings. Other things we experience are uplifting, leading to feelings of happiness and pride. When we talk about total mental health, we are not just talking about the absence of disorders, but about people who are thriving and enjoying positive well-being.

Workplace Mistreatment

The study of negative workplace experiences covers a lot of different things. These can vary from acts of incivility and rudeness, many of which might be unintended, to ongoing patterns of emotional and physical abuse and bullying. Occasional comments that someone feels are rude or insensitive and disagreements are not mistreatment. To rise to a level of mistreatment, the behavior must be targeted at an individual, and be part of a pattern of behavior that belittles, demeans, or in some way directly harms someone physically or psychologically. This is not always clear cut as people vary in the extent to which they might perceive something someone says as directed at them in a harmful way. This is recognized in the concept of hostile attribution bias, which is the tendency for a person to assume that people are directing harm toward them. When I talk about mistreatment, I mean patterns of behavior directed at others including the following acts and more.

• Belittling someone.
• Publicly calling someone out for saying something a person doesn’t like.
• Hitting or pushing someone.
• Ignoring someone and excluding them from activities (e.g., lunch) or conversations.
• Insulting someone about their work.
• Making negative comments about someone’s appearance.
• Posting something negative about someone on social media.
• Sending someone a nasty email.
• Spreading a harmful rumor.
• Threatening to harm someone.

Workplace Mistreatment Affects Mental Health

The frequency and severity of mistreatment affects the impact. Occasional rude comments are a minor annoyance with no lasting impact. Full-fledged bullying can be traumatic, leading to serious mental health challenges. In the extreme, exposure to bullying at work over an extended period can lead to traumatic stress disorder that results in hospitalization. Mistreatment that falls in the middle can still be harmful because it has the potential to undermine a person’s self-confidence and make the work environment toxic. Under those conditions few people are likely to exhibit treatable mental health disorders, but that doesn’t mean that their positive mental health is unaffected.

To maintain a positive working environment, organizations need to take steps to encourage positive interactions among employees and avoid mistreatment. Organization managers need to be the first line of defense in creating a positive climate within their work units. They set the tone by modeling respectful and kind treatment of direct reports and others. Their role should be to monitor and manage interpersonal interactions among direct reports, correcting behavior that goes over the line, and publicly recognizing those who engage in behavior that contributes to a good climate. Managers should serve as mediators in conflicts among employees, doing their best to remain a neutral third party. Such climates are built from the top down with top leaders talking about the need to maintain good professional working relationships, and practicing what they preach. Extreme acts of abuse, bullying, and harassment need to be dealt with swiftly, with appropriate disciplinary acts taken to correct such behavior before it does damage to individuals and organizations. An effective mistreatment control system within organizations is a vital element in a program to promote positive mental health at work.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pixels.

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