Is stress a disability?

zzzLazyDaisy

Even if your friend has a disability, it doesn't make him/her bullet proof.

If s/he has been off work for 6 months, their entitlement to SSP has almost expired and they are getting very close to the time when the employer will be looking at terminating their employment on the grounds that they are not capable of doing the job they are employed to do, owing to ill health. In law this is a fair reason for dismissal, provided they follow proper procedures.

What is likely to happen next is that your friend will be required to attend a meeting to discuss their future with the company. If they wish to rely on disability, all they need to do is to raise it as an issue 'I believe my mental health problems amount to a disability in law, and I believe that you have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to your working practices to enable me to return to work' Note the emphasis is in 'reasonable'.

S/he should be prepared to discuss the adjustments which s/he considers to be reasonable, which would enable him/her to return to work.

Note 'sacking the manager who is harassing me about my work performance' is NOT a reasonable adjustment. It is not carte blanche to make unreasonable demands or to hold a gun to the employer's head.

It is very likely that the employer will want permission to contact the gp for a detailed report on whether the employee does meet the criteria for being disabled and what the gp considers to be reasonable adjustments.

I have to say that, often, when an employee has been off sick for such a long time, the reality is that they probably will not return to work, and probably don't even want to. So it is very important before going down the route of campaigning to be able to return to work, that your friend is convinced that is actually what they wish to achieve. The reason I say this is because there are other outcomes that your friend might prefer, such as being allowed to resign with an agreed reference, or negotiating a severance package and a reference. The point is your friend needs to work out what they want from this, before they go into a meeting fighting for their job, if they don't in fact want to go back to work there anyway.