Two women have been fired by a government-funded trust for taking prescribed antidepressants.

One has complained to the Human Rights Commission, and another is considering the Employment Court, after her claim to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) was quashed last week.

Higher Ground Drug Rehabilitation Trust runs a drug and alcohol residential recovery programme from Te Atatu, West Auckland, and states in its code of ethics that staff who have previously had problems with drugs or alcohol "will remain abstinent of mood and mind-altering drugs".

That policy had been a cornerstone of its programme since 1983 and had been reviewed in 1998, the ERA decision said.

One of the women, a contractor, laid a complaint with the Human Rights Commission in February last year after she was sacked in 2005.

Her complaint "referred to the termination of a contract with the trust because the employer learned the complainant was taking anti-depressants", said spokesman Gilbert Wong.

Wong said mediation was now under way after being put on hold in September to await the outcome of the ERA case involving the other woman, Ida Murrie.

Murrie last week lost her ERA claim for unjustified disadvantage, discrimination on the grounds of disability, and unjustified dismissal.

Janet Scott, member of the ERA, said in her decision that in the past Murrie had had an alcohol and drug dependency problem, and in 1994, she completed a four-month residential recovery programme with the trust. Murrie volunteered at the trust after that treatment, and she started paid work in 1996, as a shopper. In 2003 she became a counsellor.

She was fired in December 2005, five months after a colleague told her boss she was taking the anti-depressant citalopram.

In 2002, Murrie had talked to programme director Stuart Anderson about the drug.

He told the ERA that he then had told her she would have to use a herbal remedy, St John's Wort, instead.

Murrie said she had tried St John's Wort, but it had given her a headache, and she had started using citalopram, which her doctor had prescribed in June 2002.

"She said it never occurred to her that Higher Ground would not allow her to take this medication, and she took it for approximately 12 months," Scott's decision said.

She was fired after a series of letters and meetings - at which she chose not to have her say over the "issue of compliance" - and Scott said the trust did all it could to help her comply with the policy.

Scott said in her decision that although there were "good medical reasons for taking such medication", Murrie was well aware of the policy and knew that taking the drugs constituted serious misconduct.