While I agree with the author's argument, stating the current year does not advance it. Seriously, it's even a meme.
Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
131–140 of 352 posts
Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
With a request like this, the best you can hope for it lots of data points (ie anecdata).
What I've seen is that in the jobs filled by younger people with little skills on the worker side and near-exploitative conduct on the employer side, was a) a rather shallow loss function ("what if I lose this job? I'm underpaid, it's a dead-end, and I can easily get another job like this", that they often still live in their parents' basement exacerbates that effect) and b) a feeling of justification for these actions ("They exploit me, I'll exploit them back").
And those weren't simply rationalizations, so I'm not sure if it's a matter of moral fortitude or lack thereof, just of a different set of morals that (are understood to) underlie that type of job. There was a strong sense of moral in the people I worked with, just along other axes (eg. stronger loyalty between peers, but much weaker up and down the hierarchy).
Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
#133Earlier 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.
I think sick days are generally a good idea as they encourage people that are sick not to come in, thus helping stem epidemics. If they're regular time off, people come in sick to save them up.
You might try to make a distinction between contagious and non-contagious diseases, but it'd probably be unwise as often people don't know if they are contagious or not, and anyway encouraging healing isn't a terrible idea even if they aren't.
That said, you shouldn't be cheap on the vacation days either.
Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a counterpoint, there are no objective scientific tests for, say, back pain or neck pain or nausea or menstrual cramps.
That is because pain is not a disease, it is a subjective experience (or symptom) generated by the nervous system.
Fair point. Counterpoint: in the sense that it is dis-ease (the absence of feeling well and easy going) it may still be a sufficient reason to take a day off work.
Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
#135Not that long ago, I was considering joining a startup where an old manager of mine was the head of eng. They seemed to be doing some cool stuff, another friend had recently joined and spoke well of it, and I thought I'd give it a go. As part of that process, my old manager took me out for coffee to talk about the company, etc. When we chatted, he basically laid down that he was concerned- when I had worked for him,…
This is where it gets tricky. Is your negative attitude due to a medical condition or you just being an asshole who has an attitude problem? And is that even material to the decision to hire you or not? No one really cares why you act like that, they simply care that you do. I'm going to say it's entirely on you to present yourself in a positive light at work, and I honestly think your ex-manager was doing you a soli…
> Is your negative attitude due to a medical condition or you just being an asshole who has an attitude problem?
I'm always unsure. These days, I'm generally a pretty positive guy but I know I've struggled in the past.
On this particular team I was definitely not the biggest asshole. In fact, after this manager left, the biggest asshole was fired pretty much based on the fact that the new managers weren't willing to tolerate his attitude. The bro culture of the team was curtailed (which is why I was so much happier on it afterwards).
It's very hard to be a manager, a people leader. I don't think he was wrong to bring up the fact - he was doing it because he wanted to protect his company - but it certainly danced around a line of legality. After I withdrew my application he made sure to tell friends of mine that he had rejected me because of my depression. Really mature, that guy is.
Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
My beloved works in health care (currently with oncology patients, previously hospice and Alzheimer's). The idea of taking days off for mental health is pretty normal and well accepted within the industry. Then again, it's a culture where mental health is treated as a health issue and sucking it up for the dollar is recognized as unsustainable over the long term. Well that and even the bosses are ready to acknowledge…
Anecdotal, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, I've a friend who works in healthcare in the UK. Even though the official line is that they're not to come in to work while ill, not turning up ends up putting them under an incredible amount of pressure, and they have to justify every sick day to the post where even when she had some quite serious issues she was still working rather than face up to her management
There is a mental overhead from work piling up whenever a person in a line position takes a day off for whatever reason. Illness, vacation, holiday...it doesn't matter.
Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
#137Great 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 felt guilty about doing it.
You shouldn't feel guilty at all. They should feel guilty for making you need to take that day off.
Your workplace should be a refuge, where you charge your batteries and build sanity. Not a constant drain on those resources.
Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> Living with ADHD and OCD as a computer programmer is a daily struggle. I've struggled with this for as long as I remember, but I didn't really understand what was wrong with me until I was diagnosed a couple of years ago after having a particularly difficult time. I was as open with my manager about it as I felt I could be, and they gave the impression of being supportive. When I got a new manager, I laid it all ou…
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Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
#139I couldn't afford to do this. My mental illness is sufficiently severe that I need months, not days, to unpack and unwind, and I haven't felt not-burnt-out in about half a decade. I only get to do this between jobs. I'm glad that this situation worked out alright for the employee, but there often isn't enough sick leave available.
That's a good point. It's trivial for almost any company to accommodate a 'mental health' sick day here or there - in fact nobody cares what you take a sick day for. So the situation in the blog post is a bit contrived and the boss pats himself a bit too much on the back for his response.
I would think true mental health accommodation would involve long periods of leave, or limited hours, or limited days (e.g. 3 day work-weeks) or all of the above. Not many businesses are setup for that.
Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace
#140Great 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 a bit confused, how is a mental sick day different from just taking a day off? Right now I can just request a day off with no explanation required as long as it's one day in advance. Is a "mental sick day" like waking up, going "!@#$%@#^! I'm sick of dealing with work" and calling in sick on the same day?
No, an example of a mental sick day would be someone who has been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder having a severe anxiety attack that prevents them from doing their job so they take the day off to try to recover.
Mental illness is a real thing, it is not just "I don't feel like going to work"