Invisible minds: The dominant wellbeing discourse, mental health, bio-power and chameleon resistance

The dominant wellbeing discourse (DWD) in neoliberal economies can be understood as a form of bio-power that presupposes healthy individuals. It seeks to produce subjects who take responsibility for their wellbeing and, in this way, render themselves productive. Drawing on interviews with individuals who volunteered a diagnosed mental health condition (MHC), we explore how they resisted the negative associations with MHCs through making their conditions invisible. Hence they sought to blend in and make themselves visible as ‘normal’, well, healthy, responsible, productive subjects. Although we call this chameleon resistance it is bound up with consent and compliance as it reproduces the DWD and negative associations with MHCs

From stress to resistance: Challenging the capitalist underpinnings of mental unhealth in work and organizations

The worldwide spread of work-related mental unhealth suggests that this is a major problem affecting organizations and employees on a global scale. In this paper, we therefore provide a thematic review of the literatures that address this issue in management and organization studies (MOS) and related fields. While these literatures examine how employee mental health is affected by organizational and occupational structures and managed by organizations and employees, they have paid relatively little attention to the capitalist labour relations which underpin the unhealthy conditions of contemporary working life. They have paid even less attention to how these conditions may be resisted. To help future scholarship in MOS challenge this state of affairs, we draw on some of the most basic but central notions of exploitation, alienation and resistance in classic and current critiques of capitalism, optimistic that this may help strengthen the field's capacity to confront mental unhealth in settings of work and organization

Identities, mental health and the workplace: a critical exploration

The incidence of mental illness is both a widespread and growing; and yet studies show that employers are reluctant to hire people with mental health conditions (MHCs). Despite often having an excellent set of qualifications and skills, backed up with a sound employment record, the stigma surrounding mental illness means that people with MHCs struggle to gain and maintain employment. This study explores the experiences of people with MHCs in work. The research focuses on how these individuals manage their condition while maintaining a legitimate identity at work in the context of widespread stigma over mental illness. Taking a critical poststructuralist approach to identity, and drawing on semi-structured interviews with people with MHCs, the research highlights a complex set of factors facilitating the construction of a pejorative mental illness subject position that prevails in contemporary society and in the workplace. The study also illustrates how individuals act upon this subject position and the effects this has on their working lives. Finally, the study considers the agential practices of self-management that are illustrative of the process of resistance and the negotiation of a legitimised identity. The study considers the effectiveness of these struggles over seeing, being and doing for the long term prospects of mental health at work. The study offers contributions to knowledge in three areas: to critical identities literature by including the experiences of mental health in the study of marginalised identities at work; to the literature on invisible and stigmatised identities, by providing a better understanding on the processes of identification; and to theorising on resistance and resistant identities as practices of self-care (Foucault, 1986). In doing so, the research not only critically analyses the concerns of a marginalised group at work but also offers broader implications to understanding mental health of all workers, and for society at large

Identity, mental health and work:how employees with mental health conditions recount stigma and the pejorative discourse of mental illness

This article asks how identity is constructed for individuals with mental health conditions (MHCs) in the workplace. It takes especial regard to how MHCs are discursively situated, constructed and reconstructed in the workplace. Employees with MHCs face a difficult situation: not only do they need to deal with the stigma and discrimination commonly associated with MHCs, but they must also manage their health condition whilst adhering to organizational demands to demonstrate performance and commitment to work. Discourse analysis derived from 32 interviews with individuals with MHCs delineates how these individuals feel both stigmatized and empowered by their MHCs. The findings address three discursive strands: (i) a pejorative construction of mental illness in employment and society; (ii) contesting mental illness at work by embracing mental health management skills; and (iii) recounting mental illness through public disclosure and change. This article enhances understanding of how the construction of positive identity in the face of negative attributions associated with MHCs contributes to literature on identity, organizations and stigma as well as raising implications for policy and practice

Organizational identity threats and aspirations in reputation management

Reputational threats are key to understanding public services’ behaviour. Previous research has viewed external performance assessments as an unwelcome imposition on public managers and a threat to organizational identity. Analysing the adoption of a self-imposed process of peer-led assessment by public managers in UK local government we show how the absence of performance assessment was seen as a reputational threat. Engaging proactively with the new voluntary assessments becomes an essential tool for active reputation management. We find that reputation does not only shape the responses to external performance assessment but the external performance assessment itself