Work accommodations in academia?

November 6, 2023 5:53 PM

What types disability accommodations are available for professors with autism, adhd, cptsd, ptsd, other mental health diagnoses in academia? This is in the U.S. in California.

I need some sort of accommodations. I have missed important deadlines, important meetings, etc. And my Deans do not seem to give me grace for being human despite the trash fire that is specific to the ongoing pandemic crap and other specific bad problems happening at my school that the union is working on and filed a complaint on our chancellor in our district.

I don't have formal diagnosis of anything except depression and anxiety and short term trauma

Do I talk to my union? I don't trust our district's HR per se.

Last dean didn't seem to give me grace. New Dean isn't either.

So I need help so that I have more support from the Dean. Like stupid stuff like maybe call me if I miss a deadline not just email me?

I'm very good at my main job: teaching students. Supporting students. Helping them feel like they belong in college and succeeding. I'm very bad at the department meetings that are not regularly scheduled ones or anything outside the scope of my regular class schedule. Meeting deadlines that seem arbitrary.

I have trouble doing things like logging in to stuff and that makes everything harder if I happen to log out. I had to redo my password twice just to log back into this sock account. All this stuff slows me down and everything takes me longer to do.

posted by mxjudyliza to Law & Government (8 answers total)

I would contact your union and also ask them what disability advocacy services there are in your region. Sometimes, there are nonprofits that can help. You might need accommodations you haven’t thought of. Also, check to see what your extended medical will cover. You might be able to access an updated psych assessment for the workplace. You might be able to use a counsellor (who could help with executive functioning or social communication coaching). You might be able to get an OT to recommend supports. Then you can use their reports or letters to access support at work.
posted by shockpoppet at 7:29 PM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yes, contact your union. they can assist if you get diagnosed with a disability. However, you probably need to look into getting diagnosed with something before you have any leverage on that topic, especially if you suspect whatever you have has wandered into "so bad it's a disability possibly" territory and if everything you've mentioned is an old diagnosis.

I'm not a professor, but I'm going through similar, if you want to MeFi mail me as to how my specific experience is going.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:40 PM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Are you currently working with a health care professional about your depression/anxiety/trauma? If not, you need to find someone who can help you get an up to date diagnosis and can link the diagnosis to the problems that you are experiencing. If you are working with someone, you will need their support to document the disability so having a conversation with them about how hard things are and how that intersects with your mental health is going to be the next step.
posted by metahawk at 9:28 PM on November 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

You are going to need a diagnosis to be accommodated for a condition. You can also take steps to mitigate your own executive functioning deficits, with or without a diagnosis. Have you considered a virtual assistant to maintain your calendar for you? (A human, not an app.)
posted by DarlingBri at 3:28 AM on November 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

There may be some accommodations you can ask for with the diagnoses you already have. Here is a page from the Office of Disability Employment Policy that lists some of the kinds of accommodations that may be useful for people with mental health diagnoses. Does anything there look like it would help you out? Great! Then the next steps look something like:

* Figure out which of these accommodations (or others that you think would help) you'd like to ask for
* Research on your company's HR/benefits site to find out what the process would be to ask for disability accommodations; there's likely a specific form your doctor will need to complete, so you want to have that in hand before you go to talk to your doctor
* Talk to your union to find out if there's anything special you should know before you embark on this process with your doctor and HR.
* Make an appointment with whatever professional(s) are treating you for your current diagnoses, bring the paperwork, know what accommodations you think would be helpful, and ask your doctor if they would be willing to provide the documentation for you to request those accommodations. (By all means, also ask them for suggestions on what else might be helpful given what they know of you! But go in with an idea of what will be helpful for you, so they can gear the documentation toward that.)
* Take the paperwork back to your workplace via whatever process their HR site laid out. Typically this will be something you do directly with HR, not with your own manager, though HR may then work with the manager to determine whether your requested accommodations are reasonable
* Expect to potentially have to do some negotiations. Give or take your specific union situation, it's likely that the university is required to engage with you and your manager in a process to determine reasonable accommodations, but that doesn't mean they have to say yes to everything you asked for, if they want to claim that what you're asking for causes unreasonable hardship for the university. They may propose XYZ instead, which may or may not work for you.
* After all of this, or simultaneous to it if you have the executive function for it, also move ahead with formal diagnosis for whatever else you think might be going on with your mental health / potential neurodivergence. There might be accommodations that e.g. an ADHD specialist might suggest or be willing to sign off on, that your GP won't be as comfortable with or knowledgeable about.
posted by Stacey at 5:45 AM on November 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

This might be helpful: https://askjan.org/
posted by NotLost at 6:39 AM on November 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

maybe call me if I miss a deadline not just email me?

A small suggestion on this is that what you may really want to try for here is support from administrative staff in your department, not time management help from the dean. It sounds like maybe your department is organized under a dean, not a chair, but either way -- where you view dealing with meetings/deadlines as not part of your "main job"*, someone at the chair/dean level will really, really not view dealing with faculty time management as their main job. But if you have good admin staff (and they aren't also overloaded, which is common) they may well be able to help out with at least some of these irregular deadlines / meetings -- sending calendar invites etc., even something like calling you in a pinch.

* the longer I'm in academia, the more I realize that the "main job" is a whole lot of things, some of which are tedious, some of which I don't particularly want to be doing, many of which are not at all what I expected 15 years ago, and essentially all of which require more time/task management effort than I would like or am good at. I'm not sure conceptualizing things aside from teaching/working with students as not your main job is really going to ultimately help you, because there's just a *lot* more than that that goes into making modern academia function. YMMV.
posted by advil at 2:06 PM on November 7, 2023 [9 favorites]

Aside from the other advice here which all seems pretty solid, one other resource you may have specifically due to being at a university is an ombudsperson / Office of the Ombuds. That office should be a confidential and neutral 3rd party that does not represent the university itself but can help point you to available resources and mediate conflicts if necessary.

Here is an FAQ page from the Office of Ombuds Services at UCLA that provides a nice quick description of what they do and don't do - it sounds like your situation would be right in their wheelhouse. There are similar offices at many/most universities, including Cal State campuses and private institutions.
posted by sigmagalator at 3:05 PM on November 7, 2023 [2 favorites]