Tom Hamilton’s odyssey in the oil business began 30 years ago and included senior positions at Exxon and British Petroleum, being president of Pennzoil’s exploration division, and serving as chair and CEO of the EEX Corporation.

None of those experiences prepared him for a more
personal odyssey.

“I had run companies all over the world, but didn’t know anything about mental illness,” Hamilton says, reflecting on the time his son was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia during his freshman year in college.

“I discovered how devastating mental illnesses are, not just to individuals but to their families,” he says

Hamilton also discovered that his situation was far from unique. “If you just look at the prevalence statistics, and you run the numbers, employers need to recognize that one out of three of their employees are going to deal with mental illness, either personally or within their immediate family,” he says.

“There’s a high incidence [of mental illness] in any work environment, yet it’s not talked about and not adequately covered by many benefits packages,” Hamilton says. “Businesses have always been concerned about absenteeism, but mental illnesses is a major cause of ‘presenteeism,’ where people come to work but aren’t productive. That was certainly my own situation after my son was diagnosed.”

Talking openly about mental illness, especially your own or that of a loved one, is a difficult first step toward dealing with it. “We’d go to evening functions and, when asked about my children, I found myself focusing all my comments on my older son, rather than on the son struggling with mental illness,” Hamilton says. “When I did start talking honestly about his illness, people would begin to look at their shoes at first. They seemed uncomfortable. But, time and again, they’d end up telling me about the struggles of their family member, their loved one.”

	“Employers need to recognize that one out of three of their employees are going to deal with mental illness, either personally or within their immediate family.”

Hamilton’s experiences have taught him that businesses need to be more proactive in educating themselves about the realities of mental illness in the workplace. “One of the things we did at EEX Corporation is that we brought in folks from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill to give a seminar to senior management,” he says. “Afterwards, I had senior managers come to me who were struggling with major depression. We were able to help them work through their illnesses. Others came to me to talk about mental-health problems that their employees were having.”

Hamilton believes that, beyond their role as employers, business leaders have a compelling reason to learn more about mental illness. “There’s always been a macho view in the boardroom, and people who get to the top typically have a lot of self-confidence and a sizeable ego. Those qualities make it harder for them to seek help,” explains Hamilton.

“If you believe that stress is often the trigger for mental illness, then it makes sense that mental illness is an affliction that company leaders need to understand—for their own sake and for the sake of those they work with” he adds. “Too many leaders don’t use the mental-health benefits they have. Some would rather admit to being a drug addict or alcoholic. The lingering view is that mental illness is brought on by personal weakness. Medical science tells us otherwise.”

His experience has shown Hamilton that dealing forthrightly with mental illness is a practical business approach and makes for good employee relations. “These are pay-me-now or pay-me-later illnesses,” he says. “You pay less on the front end than on the back end. If you don’t manage it on the front end, you’ll pay a lot for acute care.”

Hamilton points out that recovery rates for mental illness are higher than those for a lot of illnesses that are paid for by insurance benefits. “It’s kind of like cancer 50 years ago,” she says. “People need to understand that mental illnesses can be treated, and treated effectively. The most ineffective thing to do is to do nothing.”

At the EEX Corporation, Hamilton says, “we maximized the coverage, and it didn’t break our bank.” As companies move toward parity in covering the cost of treatments for mental illness as well as physical illness, total benefit costs increase by about 1-2 percent. “Businesses may be too narrow if they think only in terms of costs instead of outcomes or benefits,” he says. “The benefit [of parity] is cutting way down on ‘presenteeism’ in the workplace. The benefit is communicating to your employees that you’re interested in them as people, and they respond in ways that make your business stronger.”