Whether it's a disaffected teenager, a terminated employee seeking revenge, or a spouse or lover scorned – when it culminates in violence, it becomes the stuff of headlines. The mass shootings often inspire cries of "Something must be done" about our mental health system.

Further, in 2014 thus far we've seen a rash of suicides among Wall Street professionals and high-powered attorneys in New York, London and other cities around the world – a number of them young people in their 20s, according to a New York Post article.

Just last week, a partner in a prominent law firm hurled himself to his death from his luxury high-rise apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The man had sent a suicide note to his ex-wife, who forwarded it to a psychiatrist, but help arrived too late to save the victim. Another attorney, himself suffering from depression, started a blog last year called lawyerswithdepression.com, and reports that he has heard from thousands of fellow lawyers, judges and law students around the country who are similarly afflicted.

But then there are the lower-level incidents of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or numerous other types of mental illness that are less noticeable in the office, but cost employers heavily in terms of medical and pharmaceutical expenses, loss of productivity and employee absenteeism. One very eye-opening white paper issued by Harvard cited a number of alarming statistics:

• One national survey of employees cited 18% of respondents who said they had experienced symptoms of some type of mental health disorder within the previous month.
• Another study of chronic illness in the workplace ranked depression as the most costly health condition to businesses (mental or physical), with anxiety ranking fifth.
• Anxiety disorders affect roughly 6% of the population at some point in their lives, but typically go undiagnosed for years at a time.

The report contains no shortage of statistics about employees with diagnosed mental-health disorders receiving inadequate (if any) treatment for their conditions.

In a highly competitive labor market and unemployment still high, many workers who need and could benefit from treatment may be skittish about seeking it for fear of putting their jobs at risk. Some managers who recognize symptoms of depression or anxiety in their staffers may be at a loss as to how to offer them help. The paper ends with a call to action for employers to invest more heavily in mental health care as an investment not just in their work force but in the financial health of the organization.