Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

That said, I suspect in many cases for any given individual person, there very well likely may be "a" solution out there that would work for them, perhaps not as a "cure", but as a way to manage. The big problem is, in most places it is incredibly difficult to get in to see a mental health professional, but even worse than that, many of the successful approaches for managing mental health (spirituality & meditation, alternative nootropic supplements) are not conducive to traditional "scientific" study, and are even considered outright quackery by many (and many of them are by my reckoning, but then it depends how you look at it).

To find such approaches, you have to do a lot of personal investigation, reading forums, talking to people, etc. My suspicion is that formal mental health practitioners would rather you came in for regular, recurring one hour sessions for years, rather than pointing you in this direction. But that may just be the cynic in me.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, thought you had some great points.

As someone who has struggled with mental health myself in the past, I'm kind of wary of the whole "let's reduce depression down to how we would treat a broken arm." argument. While it's good intentioned, and I totally agree we need to reduce its stigma in society, I wonder if it does more harm then good in the long run.

Depression is a disease of the soul, and I think it is so deeply embedded in the human experience that we can't just compare it to a physical ailment. I agree you shouldn't define yourself by a mental illness, but it no doubt deeply affects how you perceive and think about the world, sometimes for worse, but also in my experience, for the better. Good employers take this into account, although i think it happens more on a employee-manager relationship level than through organizational rules. But culture helps a lot.

I think we should broach the topic of depression as a society with deep care, empathy, and patience, recognizing how enormous and fundamental it is to the human experience. To compare it to a physical ailment is restrictive and a bit reductive. (If you can't tell, I think the biochemical causes of depression are a bit overemphasized in today's society.) We will be less frustrated at the lack of progress if we understand the enormity and complexity of the problem.

You're generally correct for the folks who have decent salaried careers. If I got asked to justify a regular random day or two I took off as PTO I'd tell HR to pound sand as anyone rightfully should.

Get into hourly low wage stuff and you are treated like children, many shops require a doctor's note for any and all absences with 1 or 2 dermits until you're fired.

This has reasons from both ends of course. When I was younger I saw the need for this sort of policy or you'd get eaten alive by the low-wage masses abusing it (and abuse it they did). But on the flip-side, these policies tend to simply be abused by management once enacted - with no leeway for people to be human.

In the white collar arena it's pretty damn trivial as a manager to tell who is abusing a PTO policy and who isn't, so only the shittiest of companies enact such policies. Managerial laziness is definitely creeping into this area of life as well too though.

> Also, many people throw around terms like psychopath / ADD(ADHD)

I can't stand this because I suffer from a double whammy: true diagnosed comorbid ADHD and OCD which people assume means that I'm just really hyper and picky. Also, people nowadays tend to assume that I was self-diagnosed (I wasn't) which I find to be a rather disrespectful and demeaning assumption.

Living with ADHD and OCD as a computer programmer is a daily struggle. I have to constantly stop myself from getting hyper-focused on problems unrelated to my job and stop myself from needlessly spending hours getting meaningless details just right. These distractions negatively impact my productivity, so I'm thankful everyday that I've accumulated enough smarts over the years to make up for it with what I produce.

It sucks having to fight yourself everyday in order to live some semblance of a normal life and it really sucks when people minimize your problems by adopting them as monikers for quirky personality traits.

There is a kinda secret code for OOO or WFH emails that managers should respect. Definitely got to "Respect the code" (say in a pirate voice). As a manager I'd write purposely vague emails to contribute to this, "Sorry will be late, got jumped by a gang of ninjas" because I really don't like to set a cultural tone that isn't trusting of employees. I basically need to know you aren't going to be here but I don't need to know why.

There was an eng manager that would pester people about vaguer emails asking for clarification. I really wanted to just sit him down and explain that he isn't being clever and he was basically being a jackass for prying into people's personal lives - vague email is vague for a reason.