Aggressive will be sent to a psychiatrist: the employer will be responsible for the psyche of the employee

“Smart steels, they take a ballot before a seizure”

Russian employers were obliged to send employees for psychiatric examination “in suspicious cases” – this news is being vigorously discussed in RuNet, and it has about the same ardent supporters (“Finally, justice for the obstinate!”) as ardent opponents (“Where is the examination, there is compulsory treatment – and hello again, punitive psychiatry! We found out what this innovation is and how it is understood and implemented on the ground.

First of all, it turned out that the “innovation” is not an innovation at all, but a document that entered into force on March 1, 2023, valid for the next 6 years – until March 1, 2029. It is called an order “on a new procedure for conducting medical examinations of citizens upon admission to a certain job or periodically during the entire working life.” The draft order is posted on the portal of regulatory legal acts of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation.

“In theory, everyone understands what is meant,” says Vera Blagova, a psychiatrist at one of the metropolitan clinics. – The fact that due to the upheavals of the last three years – the pandemic, sanctions, geopolitics – the so-called “average for a hospital” mental health of a Russian has been significantly shaken. And this is not about exacerbations in those who already have a psychiatric diagnosis, but about the borderline state and behavior of those who do not have it. Everyone agrees that a person who, due to some of his personal circumstances and moods, is not able to control his outbursts of aggression, should not work with children or in hazardous industries. Those who cannot cope with depression should not come into contact with anything at work that may suggest suicide – for example, with chemical poisons or prescription drugs, etc. No one objects that the boss, seeing that the subordinate is “out of his mind”, in depression or aggression, should not silently fire him, but refer him to a doctor. But how this will happen in practice, no one understands yet.

Colleagues of my interlocutor agree with her: there is a lot of incomprehensible. If the employer, on the basis of the “mental state” of the employee, intends to refuse him a job, then he will need not just a certificate from a specialized doctor that the employee is “out of his mind”, but an official diagnosis. Otherwise, aggressive or depressed, but without a formal diagnosis, the employee will continue to harass management. The creators of the document implied that “psychiatric screening” would be prescribed if signs of mental illness were discovered during employment, work, periodic medical examinations, as well as on alarm signals from colleagues and relatives. The document also contains a list of workers to whom this applies primarily: educators and teachers, workers in hazardous industries, underground work, transport, the food industry, catering and trade, water supply facilities, medical institutions, etc. In order to study “a number of behavioral areas from March 2023, therapists and pediatricians are allowed accelerated retraining in the direction of “Diagnosis of Mental Disorders” (the course takes 72 academic hours, it can be completed by therapists, pediatricians, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, geriatricians and general practitioners). In the meantime, psychiatrists, both of the old school and the new ones, are considering all sorts of “narrow” moments of the new order (for example, will an employee’s refusal to be examined by a psychiatrist be a reason for the employer to fire him?), on the ground everything was perfectly understood even without doctors and officials .

– An excellent order, just long-awaited! – rejoices the owner of a farm in the Shatursky district of the Moscow region. – Now the tractor driver is swelled with me, so I will not run after him with persuasion, as now, but once – and to a psychiatrist. And while he is being treated there, I will find myself a sober one. Otherwise, you can’t just fire anyone now, everyone became literate, they read the Labor Code, they take a ballot before drinking or having a fit.