Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 352 posts

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#91

Post by dragonwriter »

paulddraper wrote: post #78
calafrax wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medically speaking a mental illness is no different than a physical illness. Mental illness does not have to be severe just as physical illness does not have to be severe. Sick leave policies typically only require a doctors note/visit if you are absent for multiple days. Taking a single day off for mild mental illness, something like elevated stress levels causing anxiety that interrupts your sleep, seems perfectly…

> Medically speaking a mental illness is no different than a physical illness. I'm sympathetic, but don't make the discussion worse by throwing falsehoods like this around. Besides the fact expressed by others that physically illness is more diagnosable, you typically don't get mentally ill from being in proximity to a mentally ill person. (At least, I never have.) Physical illness is a different situation. That's wh…

> Besides the fact expressed by others that physically illness is more diagnosable, you typically don't get mentally ill from being in proximity to a mentally ill person.

Contagious diseases (and, a fortiori, those that are contagious on casual contact) are a distinct subset of so-called “physical” illness.

You don't get cancer from being in proximity to someone with cancer, either.

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#92

Post by wu-ikkyu »

dragonwriter wrote: post #87
wu-ikkyu wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>some psychiatric conditions have lab tests of the same sort available. Which ones? "psychiatric diagnosis still relies exclusively on fallible subjective judgments rather than objective biological tests" -Allen Frances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Frances

Schizophrenia had one on the market briefly, and there is one for bipolar disorder that is (or was, as of last year) in clinical trials. See, e.g., http://www.thedailybeast.com/can-a-blood-test-diagnose-menta...

Do you have a source for these claims? Because the DSM-5 says otherwise

>Diagnosis is based on observed behavior, the person's reported experiences, and reports of others familiar with the person...As of 2013 there is no objective test. [5]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

Edit: the source you edited in simply states the corollary to what I've been saying all along: that scientists are still searching for a biological test for mental illness but as yet still do not have one

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#93

Post by aaron-lebo »

curun1r wrote: post #76
aaron-lebo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are very very right. When people have disorders like you list they are disabling. That's expensive for the worker and the employer and ultimately our social systems but it's just kind of expected that those people are forgotten with no resources but their own to cope. That's a horrible broken system. What scares me is the undiagnosed (as you pointed out). There's way too many people in public perception that when…

> Trump has something wrong with him, he'll never get treated A bit off-topic, but in case you're interested in that 'something', here's one analysis from a psychologist that made the rounds of liberal psychologists that my mother associates with: http://www.nationalmemo.com/psychoanalyzing-donald-trump/

That was really interesting, thanks.

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#94

Post by dragonwriter »

malnourish wrote: post #27
sethjgore wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I think that's called a personal day here in the states. They usually give you two a year too, along with sick days. Though I do agree, that there's stigma towards taking it for personal sanity, mind healing.

Are sick days still a thing? At my job we get PTO and holidays (floating depending on the year), but no specific sick days. Apologies for any naivete.

PTO is just merging sick days with vacation, usually to mask the low combined total (the nominal “benefit” to employees compared to classic separate sick plus vacation policies is that the whole amount can be used for vacation.)

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#95

Post by nassir »

I have started a remote work week business that allows office teams to work together in a tranquil, nature-filled rural environment for a week and get away from the hustle and bustle of urban cities. The response has been really good. Reach out to me: topconsultant@gmail.com

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#96

Post by clfougner »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #62
calafrax wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medically speaking a mental illness is no different than a physical illness. Mental illness does not have to be severe just as physical illness does not have to be severe. Sick leave policies typically only require a doctors note/visit if you are absent for multiple days. Taking a single day off for mild mental illness, something like elevated stress levels causing anxiety that interrupts your sleep, seems perfectly…

>Medically speaking a mental illness is no different than a physical illness. I am a proponent of taking time off for mental health, but I have to nitpick here. Medically speaking, physical illness is different from mental illness. One is diagnosed from objective scientific tests (pathology) while the other is not.

Afraid that's not true. Around 60-80% of diagnoses in primary care settings are made purely on the basis of the patient history (followed by a brief clinical examination which usually aims at eliciting subjective responses)[1]. In principle it's true that you could find a pathological explanation for all somatic ("physical") diseases which in practice are diagnosed off patient histories (with the exception of diseases for which the pathogenesis is unknown, f.ex. fibromyalgia, IBS, CFS, etc). However - in principle - the same goes for mental illnesses, although the pathogenesis of mental illnesses are generally poorly understood. If you don't think there's a physical basis for mental illnesses though, skim through the figures in this article[2] for a prime example of the ways modern medicine is disproving that. Diagnoses of both mental and somatic illnesses are heavily based off subjective factors, and both mental and somatic illnesses have very real pathophysiological etiologies.

[1] Source: medical school. Not finding a study with exact numbers from a quick search. [2] https://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v23/n1/full/nm.4246.html

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#97

Post by PeterisP »

xname2 wrote: post #39
becausewat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it's common to use the phrase "It's and..." when describing something that one finds appalling in modern society.

But how about "It's 2017 and 1+1 is still 2?"?

The message is quite different.

I read your comment as saying essentially "ok, it's business as usual, and hasn't yet changed", i.e., acknowledging a fact, and possibly acknowledging that it's likely to continue in the future (which is true).

I read their message as saying the same as you say, but also stating a value judgment - i.e. that it should be considered weird that hasn't changed, that it should have been changed ages ago (definitely before 2017), and that it should be considered unacceptable if it continues in the future. Which is quite a different story about the same facts, and this part of the story is efficiently implied by the short prefix "It's 2017 but..".

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#98

Post by martin1975 »

steven777400 wrote: post #5

Great article. A few years ago (at a previous job) I took a sick day for "sanity", but told them I wasn't feeling well. I felt guilty about doing it. I think part of it is the association of sick leave with externally visible medical issues, and the corresponding "straightforward" medical verification. In other words, if you have a temperature or are vomiting, that's obvious. Many infections or physical injury can be…

I'm diagnosed w/major depressive disorder so I could take any day as a sick day... even though a daily ssri keeps the depression/anxiety/panic attacks in check.

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#99

Post by omegaworks »

phil21 wrote: post #56
TallGuyShort wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I've never heard of anyone here being asked for a verification, but it would tend to discourage people doing the "sanity day" sort of thing. I suspect that the lack of trust this indicates on the part of the company (not to mention foster on the part of the employee) is probably a sign that you're past the point of no return. I suspect a company that asked for verification was not doing so to see if you were genui…

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…

>by the low-wage masses abusing it (and abuse it they did).

This feeds directly into the popular narrative that the working poor somehow lack moral fortitude. Do you have evidence to justify this claim?

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#100

Post by tofflos »

cryoshon wrote: post #43

first off, good for madalyn, it takes too much courage to introduce specifics regarding any kind of sick time and mental health is especially burdensome. now, moving on to the rest of the post: of course it's still an issue. taking sick time for any reason is still an issue. everyone feels the pressure to not be sick, to not take sick time, and to work while sick. i have never worked for any organization where this w…

I also came back to say that I was unsure why you were being downvoted. I think you made some good points in the first half of the post. It's probably the tone of the writing.

There is definitely a stigma around mental illness.

In Sweden there is a law on the national level - "the vacation law" that governs the minimum amount of vacation an employee can have in a year. See https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk-f... (Sorry, I couldn't find an English translation).

It's a bit like your suggestion only with "sick days" replaced with "vacation days" and "corporation" replaced with "country". You mentioned that the US was far behind the rest of the world in labor rights. This law was issued in 1977. ;-)

Post reply on HN