This article reviews challenges Mediate.com faced related to mental illness stigma, and shares how they worked through them to become a leader in convening dialogues on mental health.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Colin Rule, CEO of Mediate.com, for contributing feedback on early drafts of this article and for his work addressing these important issues.
Studies have demonstrated that people often have a harder time realizing mental illness discrimination is socially unacceptable, in contrast to clearer norms against discrimination toward other protected classes such as race or sexual orientation. Because of this, publishers can fail to notice content that discriminates against people living with mental health problems.
Mediate.com has published material from over 2,500 authors spanning more than 25 years in furtherance of their mission to share quality dispute resolution guidance that helps practitioners and consumers alike. Their goal is to function as a neutral repository of useful information from all kinds of writers, without publishing anything that might alienate or offend diversity groups. Therefore, they never intended for any of their online publications to recommend that mediators mistreat people living with mental health problems. Nonetheless, some of their articles taught mediators to treat these folks differently including instructions to manipulate them using their symptoms, bond less with them, or screen them based on whether they were taking medication.
In April 2021, the Mental Health Safe Project’s Dan Berstein contacted Mediate.com asking that they address the unintentionally problematic content published on their website. Mediate.com invited him to write an article explaining why these items might amount to discrimination and to also provide recommendations of how mediators can be accessible without stigmatizing disabilities. After reviewing drafts, Mediate.com published the article in June 2021 along with an editorial thanking Dan for this work. The editorial read, in part, "We are indebted to our friend Dan Berstein, who has taken on the task of reviewing old articles and identifying areas where information can be improved; you can read his conclusions and recommendations here: https://www.mediate.com/articles/berstein-ada.cfm. In that article Dan provides some great updated suggestions for mediators to ensure they are treating all clients with respect and inclusivity." Additionally, Mediate.com added disclaimers on the articles containing problematic guidance, suggesting people review this new article for more information.
Shortly after posting these changes, there was a backlash from the authors of the original articles. Mediate.com decided to retract the part of their editorial that endorsed Dan’s article, remove the notices on the problematic content, and temporarily delist Dan’s article from their website. Overwhelmed by the controversy sparked by many different upset authors, Mediate.com’s staff were temporarily nonresponsive to Dan’s inquiries and his requests for mediation until the situation escalated to talks of formal discrimination complaints. Ultimately, Mediate.com decided to pursue mediation with Dan. They also agreed it did not have to stay confidential, allowing for this case study to serve as a teachable example.
The mediation sessions evolved into a series of conversations sparking many positive steps forward. First, Mediate.com found an independent expert to review the problematic content. That expert recommended keeping the content public so readers might learn from the mistakes:
"If that first article had not been published, the response never would have been articulated. The person using the negative characterization would continue to do so, and everyone that person trains or mentors would be similarly instructed. There is no guarantee that the original author will change their perspective. Individuals who read the original article and then the responses, however, will become informed and sensitized to the fact that we may need to reconsider how we provide our dispute resolution services."
Inspired by the expert’s call for conversation, the Mental Health Safe Project launched a survey to learn whether people agreed with the guidance in the six Mediate.com articles that started the debate. A draft instrument was reviewed by Mediate.com leadership and modified based on their feedback. The survey showed that most respondents understood the flagged content was not appropriate. However, a minority did not realize the stigmatizing practices were problematic.
For instance, 38.9% of respondents agreed with suggestions that mediators who are worried about a party’s potential incapacity should try to determine if that party has a disability, even though it is actually inappropriate for a mediator to ever investigate someone’s disability (the Americans with Disabilities Act provides privacy protections). Similarly, 22.3% of respondents agreed that mediators should bond less with parties who may have personality disorders, despite this being a form of disparate treatment and social exclusion. 16.7% of mediators agreed with checking if someone had taken medication to determine their eligibility to receive services, when that is not a permissible screening criterion. These results illustrated the need for more education.
After Mediate.com made the decision to leave the problematic content up as a learning opportunity, they also decided to use their convenor role to push the field forward in discussing these important issues. First, their CEO wrote an article suggesting it's time for the dispute resolution field to address mental illness stigma and pointing people to the Mental Health Safe Project for help. Mediate.com also updated their Diversity and Inclusion Statement to pledge to not publish or promote discriminatory content. Lastly, they decided to host their own Mental Health and Mediation Conference specifically to give people an opportunity to voice, discuss, and evolve their practices.
In developing that conference, Mediate.com dialogued with the Mental Health Safe Project to brainstorm ways to reduce the likelihood of more inadvertently discriminatory content. They convened the ADR community with the explicit understanding that there would inevitably still be more problems that emerge in their conference, because we are all still doing our best to improve our sensitivity and our practices. The conference stressed this was an ongoing journey.
During his welcome remarks, Mediate.com CEO Colin Rule emphasized the importance of appreciating how damaging mental health stigma can be, the necessity of re-examining our assumptions, and the aspiration of becoming "mental health safe" mediators that treat parties consistently while also preventing inappropriate language about mental health problems. Much of the conference echoed these themes of empowerment and preventing mental health labels from compromising our impartiality. Yet, amidst a 20-hour conference program designed to be empowering about mental health, there were also some inevitable, occasional moments where potentially harmful content still surfaced. The evolving question is, how do we – as dispute resolvers - address inadvertent mental illness stigma, especially when it can be so hard to notice?
Mediate.com’s conference has already sparked some leaders to apply lessons learned to re-examining problematic content. The Mental Health Safe Project is also working with some conference attendees to identify any disempowering content from the program and provide information that Mediate.com can consider adding to their conference materials as a supplement to ensure attendees learn techniques to mitigate any unintentional discrimination.
Mediate.com's commitment, as a repository of articles and as a conference convener, is to earnestly set the stage for important conversations to happen - all while espousing Mediate.com’s own values of sensitivity, inclusion, and empowerment toward all diversity groups. This case study illustrates that Mediate.com is a model of facing difficult issues, reflecting carefully on how to engage them, and then finding ways to move forward. Their staff has devoted themselves to a continuing journey of developing ways to facilitate progress while remaining inclusive to all voices and communities. They serve as an example of the valuable breakthroughs that can happen by addressing challenges head-on instead of avoiding them. Mediators, after all, know the power of collaborating and crafting forward-looking solutions.
