If depression is disrupting your work life, there are a number of things you can try in order to keep yourself going – and hold onto your job. Doing anything when deeply depressed, however, is never easy. Depression takes away the energy and motivation you need to act. But if your co-workers, supervisor or clients start noticing that you’re not delivering what they need, you may have little choice.
I don’t want to imply that these are surefire methods, but they’re worth considering. If none of them work, you might have to consider more drastic action, and I’ll talk about that in the next post in this series. It made sense to me, when I was going through this crisis, to try everything, starting with the simplest approach I could think of and working from there.
One of the few guides I’ve found for understanding the options is the excellent Working in the Dark: Keeping Your Job While Dealing with Depression, by Fawn Fitter and Beth Gulas. It’s a highly useful, insightful and encouraging overview of steps you can take, much of it based on Fawn Fitter’s own experience. I’ve adapted some of her advice for this post, and added what I’ve learned.