There has long been felt to be a stigma associated with mental health in the workplace, with previous research showing that employees are extremely reluctant to own up to any difficulties to their boss. Research from North Carolina State University underlines these fears, as even discussing mental health on social media can impact how potential employers view us.

“People are often encouraged to discuss their mental health struggles on social media with the goal of reducing the stigma associated with mental health challenges,” the researchers explain.

“We think reducing stigma around mental health is extremely important, but our study suggests that mental health posts on platforms such as LinkedIn could have unforeseen consequences for people disclosing their mental health challenges.”

Professional view

The researchers discovered that the way we talk about mental health online has a particular impact on how others might view us professionally.

The study looked at how talking about mental health on LinkedIn affects what people think about someone’s personality and their future work performance.

They asked 409 professionals who have experience in hiring to take part in the study. They split these participants into different groups.

• One group (25%) saw a LinkedIn profile of a job seeker without any mention of mental health.
• Another group (25%) saw the same LinkedIn profile, but this time it included a post where the job seeker talked about dealing with anxiety and depression.
• A third group (25%) not only saw the LinkedIn profile but also listened to an interview with the job seeker.
• The last group (25%) saw the LinkedIn profile with the mental health post and heard the interview.

After this, all participants were asked questions about what they thought about the job seeker’s personality and how well they might do in the future job.

Negative spillover

“We found that study participants who saw the LinkedIn post about mental health challenges viewed the job candidate as being less emotionally stable and less conscientious,” the researchers explain. “Hearing the interview lessened a study participant’s questions about the candidate’s emotional stability, but only slightly. And hearing the interview did not affect the views of participants about the job candidate’s conscientiousness. In other words, the perceptions evaluators had after seeing the LinkedIn profile largely persisted throughout the interview.”

The authors are at pains to point out that they don’t believe that their findings should discourage people from posting about mental health online or seeking support, but that they should be aware that doing so might nonetheless harm their employment prospects.

“There is a big push for people to always be their full authentic selves, but there has been little research into any positive or negative consequences associated with that,” they explain. “This study is a step toward getting a more complete picture, and it highlights just how much additional work is needed.”