As a result to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) both the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and American Medical Association (AMA) now recognize obesity as a disease that requires medical and psychiatric intervention for prevention and treatment.
In a sense, the medical standard has expanded beyond morbid obesity to include one in three workers! It’s easy to see how the medical and drug community would like to expand their opportunities – and why the obese can be quick to claim that they have a disease for which they bear no responsibility. Combine this level of special interest groups working together with an aggressive EEOC, and you can expect to find many frustrated employers dealing with this issue.
Did you know that binge eating, formerly known as gluttony, is a mental disorder characterized by eating large amounts of food quickly at least once per week for three months? I don’t make this stuff up! How do you accommodate a person who shows up sick the day after one of these binges? Did you know that obesity is a defined primarily by body mass index (BMI), which is a far from accurate indicator of a person’s actual health?
It’s important to ask “Why should I have to accommodate (meaning pay for) an employee’s poor lifestyle choices?” The best justification the AMA could come up with is: “The suggestion that obesity is not a disease, but rather a consequence of a chosen lifestyle exemplified by overeating and/or inactivity is equivalent to suggesting that lung cancer is not a disease because it was brought about by an individual’s chose to smoke cigarettes.” My response is that employers should not have to pay for health consequences of employees who choose to smoke either.
Let’s hope that the EEOC will limit obesity accommodation protection to those who truly have an underlying medical disability and not self-imposed poor choices. Time will tell.