First, I am in a non-tenure-track position, seeking a tenure-track job. It seems to me that search committees for these positions tend to look for reasons not to hire candidates and, of course, Google can be very helpful in this regard. Given the sort of stigma that others tend to attach to people with depression, I worried that publicizing my condition under my real name could only hurt my chances in the philosophy job market.
Second, and perhaps relatedly, I’ve found that in instances where one speaks about one’s disability in a public, professional context, a particular kind of narrative tends to predominate, one to which my story does not neatly conform. These are stories in which one can clearly separate one’s life-as-disabled from one’s life-as-professional: one provides, within the story, assurances that one’s condition is under control, which is to say that one’s disability will not significantly affect one’s productivity, team dynamics, or any other features of one’s professional capacity.
Before the last year, I thought this was true of me as well. My most recent episode of clinical depression began last year, and the effects of it reverberated throughout my professional life in unexpected ways. I noticed that I had become more truculent with my students; I had difficulty grading assignments in a timely manner or preparing sufficiently for class; and I’ve really wanted nothing at all to do with my colleagues, many of whom are, in any case, rather cool and distant towards the non-tenure-track faculty.