7 ms·

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,

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 was not the case-- even in some good places that were good to their workers-- and have only escaped it by working for myself. >It’s 2017. I cannot believe that it is still controversial to speak about mental health in the workplace when 1 in 6 americans are medicated for mental health. you see, mental health is more of a threat than "physical" health. you get better from having a cold. you sniffle through a few days of work, maybe take a day at home, then sniffle through another day or two, and the lost productivity stops. the spectre of mental health is that it is a long term sap on an employee's productivity that will also have flare-ups which result in time taken off, total work stoppage, malingering, unreliability, and bad morale. and it can't really be "cured" just treated. it's the profit seeking organization's nightmare. they'd never hire someone mentally ill, if they could reliably avoid being sued for their discrimination. >It’s 2017. I cannot believe that it is still controversial to offer paid sick leave. only in the blisteringly backwards and proudly ignorant USA is it controversial. we are far behind the rest of the world when it comes to labor rights and treating people like human beings. elsewhere the issue is settled definitively. to be blunt the CEOs haven't done their part in fighting for this basic right, nor has the government, nor have the workers. everyone has too much to lose by being the one to push, so nobody pushes. >Our jobs require us to execute at peak mental performance. When an athlete is injured they sit on the bench and recover. Let’s get rid of the idea that somehow the brain is different. the difference is that an athlete ages out of being competitive after a time, and so their profit-driven self-infliction of injury ends earlier. workers are stressed by work for most of their lives, for most of the hours of their waking day. work is far more detrimental to people's brains than being an athlete is to the body. oh yeah, and workers can't choose when to stop, unless they want to choose to stop eating too. to be blunt there's no way that american workers could possibly operate at peak mental performance with their mental scaffolding so occupied with maintaining job security. this causes mental illness too, of course. name a bigger stressor for people than their jobs / money. >Take some time this week to express gratitude to individuals on your team. You might be surprised at the positive impact. this is a bare minimum, not part of any solution. the real solution (which won't be implemented because it is expensive) is to have an iron law in your corporation that your employees must take X paid sick days per year or per month. it's that simple. then it won't be an issue, because it'll be a policy that people are forced to follow. there's no guilt about taking sick days for any health reason at that point. nobody feels like they're being dead weight when they take a sick day. >Take some time to reflect on how your company’s values help create a safe-space for your teammates this is more likely to be lip service or self-deception at most companies than it is a reality. most companies value profit, and act accordingly when that value contradicts the health of their employees because their employees are replaceable. >1 in 6 of whom is likely medicated for a mental health issue. this should tell us that our society is violently unhealthy for our minds, as is our work culture. and they are.

altonzheng 9y ago
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.
- msla 9y ago
  > Not sure why you're being downvoted Probably because of the toxic tone.
  - altonzheng 9y ago
    Huh really, didn't get that vibe but okay.
  - cryoshon 9y ago
    if you don't fear negativity it can't hurt you
- cryoshon 9y ago
  >(If you can't tell, I think the biochemical causes of depression are a bit overemphasized in today's society.) this is actually "necessary" in the sense that it prevents discussion of other equally substantive depression-causing things such as a precarious lifestyle contingent upon retaining paid employment. put differently: depression is multifactorial, but the medical consensus is that it's connected to anxiety. and anxiety, while also biochemical and genetic, is in large part caused by external factors. but if we admit that external factors cause anxiety and thereby depression, we admit that the very jobs we're afraid to take time off from to tend to our depression are in fact causing us to be depressed in the first place. and for the american culture, this reality cannot be voiced-- it's antithetical to capitalism as we practice it. finally: talking about mental illness at work is a surefire way to find yourself unemployed or longlisted for a promotion. this adds an additional level of furtiveness to those who are already mentally ill, which makes their issues worse. whether or not someone has a genetic predisposition to mental illness or not-- and many likely do-- a good work culture can make things either a bit easier, or much harder.

altonzheng 9y ago

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.

msla 9y ago
> Not sure why you're being downvoted Probably because of the toxic tone.
- altonzheng 9y ago
  Huh really, didn't get that vibe but okay.
- cryoshon 9y ago
  if you don't fear negativity it can't hurt you
cryoshon 9y ago
>(If you can't tell, I think the biochemical causes of depression are a bit overemphasized in today's society.) this is actually "necessary" in the sense that it prevents discussion of other equally substantive depression-causing things such as a precarious lifestyle contingent upon retaining paid employment. put differently: depression is multifactorial, but the medical consensus is that it's connected to anxiety. and anxiety, while also biochemical and genetic, is in large part caused by external factors. but if we admit that external factors cause anxiety and thereby depression, we admit that the very jobs we're afraid to take time off from to tend to our depression are in fact causing us to be depressed in the first place. and for the american culture, this reality cannot be voiced-- it's antithetical to capitalism as we practice it. finally: talking about mental illness at work is a surefire way to find yourself unemployed or longlisted for a promotion. this adds an additional level of furtiveness to those who are already mentally ill, which makes their issues worse. whether or not someone has a genetic predisposition to mental illness or not-- and many likely do-- a good work culture can make things either a bit easier, or much harder.