Ask HN: What to do if I’m about to lose my job to mental health issues

Have you opened up to friends or family? When I was struggling with depression and anxiety, one of the best things was calling or hanging out with a friend. Therapists are also great but the key is that when you're speaking to someone else, they can help break you out of negative feedback loops. Depression and anxiety usually occur from what they call a dark spiral, the thoughts tend to spiral down, and to you they make sense, but when you talk to someone about it, they're like woah how did you make that jump? Good friends are a great way to bring you back, foster positive energy, and a great break.

You've recognized you need help. It'll be hard but you've already taken the hardest step.

A quick bandaid that you can try right now is meditation. My favorite meditation app is Headspace. You don't even need a meditation app but when you start to feel overwhelmed start breathing in and out. Focus on your breath. If you have the energy, take a walk.

If you have a lot of energy, hit the treadmill or run for 40 minutes. If you're a runner great, do a 5k. If you're not a runner start the c25k program. Getting your body moving helps. It might be the best, most natural help you can get. When you push your body, and your body feels heavy, your arms feel heavy, and you just want to literally stop, lie down and kiss the ground, if you keep going through all of that, you will build mental strength and also experience dopamine from a runner's high. Nothing makes me feel better than a run, even sex.

If your depression gets worse you might not have the energy anymore. I would highly recommend you recruit the help of your family and friends so they can support you in case you get worse. I wish I had someone that could have helped me find a therapist or psychiatrist while I was struggling. It was so easy but so overwhelming. If you need help looking for a provider in your area, I can help look up options for you. Also here if you ever need to talk.

If you see a psychiatrist and they prescribe you drugs and they work, then that's awesome. You might just need one drug that could lift your mood just to get out of this slump right now- so it's definitely worth looking into. Forget the stigma, if it works, you'll wish you had done this a lot sooner and you'll recover a lot faster too. Are you getting enough sunshine, vitamin D, and B?

This might be shitty advice but something that has helped me a lot is putting things into perspective. If you lose your job, you could find another one. If you start having financial trouble, maybe you can lower your expenses. Maybe identify your worst case scenarios and possible solutions to that and see if it would be that bad and life destroying. It sounds like you've had a really shitty couple of events and of course that would get anyone depressed, so please don't take anything personally, and focus on your health, happiness, and recovery.

For me when I was struggling, the worst case scenario was that I could just pack up my bags, move back home, and start again. That didn't seem so bad. I still had my health, my skills, my relationships, and I could find another job. These days whenever I feel sad, I just think about all the things that I do have that lots of people don't. I'm alive which means I still have the ability to change things. Life can feel shitty but it's still a blessing and a privilege if you were born with the right things and if you're a software dev, you were. You can literally do anything you want, you're just currently in a slump, this slump doesn't define you. Wish you the best of luck.

There is a literal ton of research that indicates in acute situations, CBT is a very efficient way to gain coping mechanisms. It may take some time (or other methods) to solve underlying issues, but CBT can act as a temporary crutch. CBT is also interesting because this individual is experiencing some financial problems. One of the dirty little secrets of being near financial ruin is that you end up relying upon freely available/socialized forms of help. In the vast, vast majority of cases, these types of resources offer a very limited tool chest, and CBT is the single tool they use most.

It's also important to know that you won't get the chance to work with twenty different therapists to find one you get on with. In most jurisdictions, you wait three months to get access to someone. And if that person doesn't work out, it's too bad, but there just aren't the resources.

The lack of resources means that the people you work with won't have the time to try different things. They have to rely upon methods that provide the greatest probability of stabilizing the issue in the shortest amount of time.

But most importantly, it's about seeking a type of therapy. There's a shitty fucked up thing about depression and anxiety that keeps people away from therapy.

Kudos for talking about this to strangers.

Ask your Dr for help and documentation. If asked by management why you didn't talk about it sooner perhaps stating you were trying hard to overcome it might help. It seems you honestly were. I'm in the U.S. and you can't be fired for a disability easily. They will want to cover themselves in case of a lawsuit, probably. This means you probably still have time to start working with your company to help you get back on track in a way that keeps your stress down and still makes you a productive employee for the company.

Just out of curiosity, have you considered an "emotional support dog"? I am seeing more people who have a dog with them at work for stress and support. I personally think that petting an animal lowers stress, at least for me.

I wish you the best. Mental health issues are tough. Kudos again for tackling being in a tough position.

I'm not a professional; I would strongly caution against offering or following non-professional advice in a situation like this one. IME, even professionals - experts in their field - will not offer advice based on such limited information.

If for some reason I can't imagine I offered such advice, I would do so in as judiciously, measured, and precise a way as possible. Hyperbole is, IMHO, not an indicator carefully considered ideas but of emotion.

They can fire you,you can't stop em.you'll be lucky if you don't get homeless.that's where many bad mental cases end up.Yes,even if you can get disability,or SSI,you should try & work doing ANYTHING,Some people work for civil service,and regularly have breakdowns,but civil service usually takes them, back.That is the only work place I know of,that has many mentally or emotionally ill people---because after the illness abates,the job takes you back. If it gets too bad, yes, you cannot work.If you can live with any family,even for a while, do it.Once you lose it all,and get homeless,you join the oceans of mentally ill homeless.I struggled all my life,and I finally have a tiny roof over me--everyone else in the family died,i outlived them all.You might want to consider how bad it'll get, cause spending all yer life this way, is horrible,I hate it,it never really improved, serious illnesses never go away completely.--often its a type of brain damage,clinical depression is.good luck.