Need advice on managing a struggling colleague
Hey fellow academics.
I'm currently co-leading a mental health research project. It's my first research project and first experience of co-leading a research project. I’m hitting a wall with a colleague on our team. I need some objective, outside perspective on work ethics and how to manage this situation, especially from those who have supervised or co-led research teams.
We are researchers on the same project. I work from the office and am managing the project's direction. For some personal background, I have clinical diagnosis of ADHD and I'm on medication. I also have a medical history of depression and anxiety. Recently, I experienced a relapse of depression and ADHD symptoms, which has caused me to perform sub-optimally lately. However, despite this relapse, I still manage to finish almost all of my tasks on time.
My colleague currently works remotely from their hometown. They had to move back due to financial barrier to rent. They have a significantly lighter task load than I do.
My colleague is consistently underperforming. They struggle with severe chronic sleep, anxiety, and trauma-related issues. I have profound empathy for this, having navigated severe mental health crises of my own, I know exactly how debilitating it can be. They are highly mental-health literate and have tried to seek professional help, but unfortunately, they have not yet succeeded in securing effective treatment or a formal diagnosis.
It is worth noting that this is a chronic issue and has been happening for around one year. Even when they were working alongside us in the office before moving, they were often underperforming. I acknowledge that they finished many tasks on time and successfully, which I and other team members highly appreciated.
Because their conditions remain unmanaged, tasks often fall through the cracks. As a result, I have had to step in and take over their tasks multiple times just to keep the project from falling behind.
Recently, the disparity in our work output has become too significant to ignore. I perceived that they use their unmanaged symptoms to justify why they are underperforming on the tasks they already have.
It feels incredibly frustrating. I was battling relapse of my own conditions, yet I still pushed through to meet my deadlines and absorbed their incomplete tasks. While I recognize that they are genuinely trying to get help, expecting the rest of the team to continually catch what they drop is burning me out.
From an academic and professional standpoint, is their persistent underperformance justifiable in a mental health research setting while they are trying to get effective help?
At what point does empathy for a colleague's mental health cross the line into enabling poor work output, especially when it forces other team members to take over their tasks?
As a co-lead, how would you address this professionally?
I want to be compassionate, but the workload disparity is actively burning me out during my own mental health relapse.
Any advice on how to navigate this dynamic would be hugely appreciated.