His supervisor avoided Mr. G’s phone calls and e-mails and stopped meeting with him. Instead, she met with Mr. G’s subordinates. The subordinates started to ignore Mr. G’s instructions and would roll their eyes or be inattentive when he spoke. Coworkers stopped talking when Mr. G approached, and he started receiving anonymous e-mails questioning his ability and sanity. He was reprimanded in writing for having made a $9 mathematical error in an expense reimbursement request.
Mr. G said when he approached his superior about the work environment, she stated that he was “just paranoid” and needed to see a psychiatrist.
When Mr. G’s wife accompanies him to the second interview, she confirms his impressions of ostracism and gossip at work. She also relates her experiences with people from Mr. G’s office who previously had been friendly but now were distant or hostile. Mr. G shows me copies of harassing work e-mails and memos. I tell Mr. G I believe his story and diagnose him as suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He begins supportive/cognitive therapy and continues flurazepam.
Mobbing syndrome
As it turns out, Mr. G was not paranoid; his coworkers really were trying to get him. Leymann5 divided 45 types of mobbing behaviors into 5 categories. These were organized as attacks on:
- self-expression and ability to communicate (victim is silenced, given no opportunity to communicate, subject to verbal attacks)
- social relationships (colleagues do not talk to the victim, victim is physically isolated from others)
- reputation (victim is the target of gossip and ridicule)
- occupational situation (victim is given meaningless tasks or no work at all)
- physical health (victim is assigned dangerous tasks, threatened with bodily harm, or physically attacked).
Table 1
Mobbing syndrome: 10 factors
| Assaults on dignity, integrity, credibility, and competence |
| Negative, humiliating, intimidating, abusive, malevolent, and controlling communication |
| Committed directly or indirectly in subtle or obvious ways |
| Perpetrated by ≥1 staff members* |
| Occurring in a continual, multiple, and systematic fashion over time |
| Portraying the victim as being at fault |
| Engineered to discredit, confuse, intimidate, isolate, and force the person into submission |
| Committed with the intent to force the person out |
| Representing the removal as the victim’s choice |
| Unrecognized, misinterpreted, ignored, tolerated, encouraged, or even instigated by management |
| *Some researchers limit their definition of mobbing to acts committed by >1 person |
| Source: Adapted with permission from Davenport N, Schwartz RD, Elliott GP. Mobbing: emotional abuse in the American workplace. Ames, IA: Civil Society Publishing; 1999:41 |
- different ethnicity
- an “odd” personality
- high achievement.
Phases of mobbing
| Conflict, often characterized by a ‘critical incident’ |
| Aggressive acts, such as those in Table 1 |
| Management involvement |
| Branding as difficult or mentally ill |
| Expulsion or resignation from the workplace |
| Source: Adapted with permission from Davenport N, Schwartz RD, Elliott GP. Mobbing: emotional abuse in the American workplace. Ames, IA: Civil Society Publishing; 1999:38 |
Secondary morbidity. Victims of workplace mobbing frequently suffer from:
- adjustment disorders
- somatic symptoms (eg, headaches or irritable bowel syndrome)
- PTSD6,7
- major depression.8
Leymann3 estimated that 15% of suicides in Sweden could be directly attributed to workplace mobbing. Although no other researcher has reported such a dramatic proportion, others have reported increased risk of suicidal behavior among mobbing victims.10
Table 3
Degrees of mobbing
| First degree: Victim manages to resist, escapes at an early stage, or is fully rehabilitated in the original workplace or elsewhere |
| Second degree: Victim cannot resist or escape immediately and suffers temporary or prolonged mental and/or physical disability and has difficulty reentering the workforce |
| Third degree: Victim is unable to reenter the workforce and suffers serious, long-lasting mental or physical disability |
| Source: Adapted with permission from Davenport N, Schwartz RD, Elliott GP. Mobbing: emotional abuse in the American workplace. Ames, IA: Civil Society Publishing; 1999:39 |