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Inside Atlassian: teamwork and mental illness in the workplace

April 27, 2017

Published In Development

That’s a scary statement to hear/read, and believe me, it’s even scarier to say/write. How would you react if someone you didn’t know well said it to you? Mental illness is a tough subject to talk about – even to think about – but at some point, you’re going to be confronted with it. That is if you haven’t been already.

According to reports by the World Health Organization, one in four people in the world have suffered, will suffer, or are currently suffering from mental health issues. I am one of those people, albeit an outspoken one.

Let’s take that figure and apply it something tangible, like the workplace. Turns out, people like me are the people that you work with every day. At Atlassian, where I work, we have about 2,000 people on staff. So if we do the math, that means 500 people in Atlassian’s employ have, are, or will suffer from some kind of mental health issue.

Which of these people will be affected by mental illness? You probably can’t tell just by looking.

I’m a 24-year old male suffering from three different disorders: Bipolar II Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, and Seasonal Affective Disorder. I’m in the not-so-unique situation of being counted among those one in four for the rest of my life. One in four of you are (or will be), too. And the other three work with someone like us.

Mental health issues can make it really challenging for a person to hold down a job (let alone excel in their career). But with one in four people affected by mental illness, we as a community of workers need to learn to navigate these issues – whether for our own sake or for the sake of supporting teammates we care about.

I’m lucky enough to work with people who not only tolerate the unpredictability that goes with my disorders but actively try to support me. Put that together with me being outspoken, and here we are: me writing about my experiences, hoping to give you just a little insight into my world. And maybe helping you and your team understand more about what, statistically speaking, you’ll probably have to deal with at some point, in some way.

A day in the life

Bipolar is something that affects every aspect of my life; not knowing how I’ll wake up feeling, whether I’ll be energetic and ready to go (which comes with its own problems) or not want to even so much as see anybody, much less talk to them is something that is tough to deal with.

Being cyclic in nature, it’s also something that isn’t triggered by anything in particular; it’s something that just happens. The two sides of it are known by the extra-creative descriptions of “up” and “down”.

"Down" days and weeks are what can be perceived and probably easiest described as depression. All of the classic symptoms of depression are present: lethargy, lack of socializing, sleeping more and eating less, agitation, nerves, and so on. Working in a social environment (I’m in an IT/help-desk role) makes these days really tough to handle at times.

Up days and weeks are tougher to describe, as there’s nothing quite like it. In one sense, it seems like everything is being seen through gold-tinted glasses. I have more energy, I want to talk to people, I want to just do things. But in the last two years, I’ve slowly come to realize that there’s an odd smattering of emotions in there – it’s not all good things.

I was diagnosed almost five years ago, and the only way I can describe it accurately is this: it’s emotional amplification. Imagine feeling everything you feel on a daily basis, just three times as intensely. All the joy and happiness are amazing. But then the anger, agitation, even apathy, and sympathy are also being amplified. That’s how an “up” day feels.

Anxiety is a little bit easier to describe as it’s something that most people have felt, albeit to a lesser extent than someone suffering with an anxiety disorder. If you’ve ever felt worried about something to the point you’ve had a lump in your throat, or it’s all you can seem to think about, you’ve seen anxiety.

An anxiety or panic attack, though, is different. It’s all of those things, but with it comes chest contractions, hyperventilation, and the feeling that you can’t get enough air. It can also strike at any time, and about things that wouldn’t usually make a person anxious. On top of that, there’s something known as the spiral of anxiety: worrying so much about how people will react to your anxiety, especially if you have an attack in public, that you get more anxious which only makes the worrying worse. And so it goes on and...