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> For one, more workers are using up sick time often for reasons such as mental health. Aren't vacations supposed to be for mental health? I think it's importa

by bko 3y ago

> For one, more workers are using up sick time often for reasons such as mental health. Aren't vacations supposed to be for mental health? I think it's important and healthy to take time off, but why lump it with "sick" days? It's difficult to even pin down what qualifies as a mental health day. Some articles I read it's as general as "not being in the right headspace". I think it's categorically different than when you have an infectious disease.

saagarjha 3y ago
Vacations are to relax and enjoy yourself. Mental health days are when you're unable to work because of mental, rather than physical, impairments.
bpoyner 3y ago
Some companies don't make a difference between personal days and sick days. Both are days where the employer is given little to no notice that you won't be at work that day. Vacation days generally should be planned ahead of time.
taurath 3y ago
It’s not difficult for everyone to tell what a mental health day is. Sometimes you can’t get out of bed. Sometimes you’re flashbacking so hard you have the capacity of a 10 year old. Sometimes someone is trying desperately to not self harm. There’s a tendency to trivialize mental health as somehow not health, I think because a lot of the time people have such trouble empathizing, as if somehow it’s not a real thing. This attitude is why so many people with mental health problems find it difficult to keep and maintain employment - so many question and trivialize any mental health problem as some inherent weakness rather than as a disease, or an injury.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > Sometimes someone is trying desperately to not self harm. If that's the goal, taking time off work seems like it would be actively counterproductive.
jpalawaga 3y ago
No, vacation is paid time off so you can enjoy life. Not so you don’t have a mental breakdown at work. Put differently, mental health is health too.
- aikinai 3y ago
  A perfectly healthy person can get a cold, need a day or two off, and then be back at 100%. I don't think a day or two off is going to take someone from the verge of a mental breakdown, to 100% mentally healthy. So they're not really equivalent.
  - r2_pilot 3y ago
    >I don't think a day or two off is going to take someone from the verge of a mental breakdown, to 100% mentally healthy. Fuck this attitude. I've avoided burnout by taking short-notice leave, a day at a time. I have used it to get clothes ready for the next work day, cleanup house, take care of my dog, play video games, or pursue hobbies. It keeps my mental health at a reasonable level. Maybe not 100% but you can't really put a percent on physical health either. And it's easier to take one day to recover(going from e.g. 20% to 80%) than to need months of recovery when you do get totally burned out.
    - sudosteph 3y ago
      That's been 100% my experience as well. The real choice for me is "do I want to sit in front of my keyboarding spiraling down further and being mostly useless (and feeling guilty about that), or do I want to spend a little time addressing the problem and come back when I can function." Often times even just 3-4 hours is enough to do that. Getting FMLA protection for my chronic health condition has been amazing for that as it removed the guilt I used to feel about taking time, and I'm more productive than I've been in years despite taking a few hours a week. Recovering from burnout is seriously hard and it honestly needs it's own DSM diagnosis at this point.
  - foldr 3y ago
    It’s not normal to recover to 100% from a cold after a couple of days. Well enough to work, sure, but not 100%.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
quantified 3y ago
Vacations are for life itself! Some people are super happy working every day, that's their life. Good on them. They might still use vacation for funerals, moving households, other needs of life. If you work to live rather than live to work, they are for doing things that make you happy. Is that mental health? I guess. But that frames the goal as maximum working not maximum life. Think about it, seniority comes with more vacation time. As a "perk", it's desirable on its own. Unless work is inherently unhealthy, and it's a perk to be less unhealthy.
- StevenWaterman 3y ago
  Additionally, often in europe being sick (including mental health) while on vacation entitles you to replacement vacaction days
nullindividual 3y ago
It’s painful to read this style of attitude to the organ we know so little about. “Mental” health is no different from heart health— it’s a collection of cells, some chemicals, and a bit of electricity. If any of that goes wrong in your heart, do you have the same callous attitude?
ragingrobot 3y ago
What do most jobs give for vacation time? It took me 15 years at my current job to get four weeks. Before that, two. Assuming that two weeks a year is the norm going on other posts here, you feel it's appropriate to go say six months (evenly spacing those vacations) to work every day and the employee be at their best? What if said employee rarely gets physically ill, they should not have access to a day off here and there?
steveBK123 3y ago
I think taking sick days for mental health is exactly what it's for. And within some reasonable amount, it's not unreasonable to take it after a really awful night of sleep or crazy 18 hour shift the day before, etc. With white collar office work we can do remotely, we've all been lulled into taking essentially 0 sick days truly off. I've probably taken an average of 0-1 per year in my career. Most of the time any of us are sick we, at most, offer that we'll be offline a couple hours and login for the rest of the day. Our parents generation had jobs where they accrued 5-7 days/year of sick day, and actually rolled it over like vacation days.. sometimes with no limits, allowing them to retire a year early paid, etc. We've let this all get chipped away to the point that many of us don't even have vacation days that rollover, or if they do, must be used within Q1 and then get zeroed out on March 31st. Never mind a fixed allotment of sick days we can feel comfortable using without suspicion.

by bko 3y ago

saagarjha 3y ago

Vacations are to relax and enjoy yourself. Mental health days are when you're unable to work because of mental, rather than physical, impairments.

bpoyner 3y ago

Some companies don't make a difference between personal days and sick days. Both are days where the employer is given little to no notice that you won't be at work that day. Vacation days generally should be planned ahead of time.

taurath 3y ago

It’s not difficult for everyone to tell what a mental health day is. Sometimes you can’t get out of bed. Sometimes you’re flashbacking so hard you have the capacity of a 10 year old. Sometimes someone is trying desperately to not self harm. There’s a tendency to trivialize mental health as somehow not health, I think because a lot of the time people have such trouble empathizing, as if somehow it’s not a real thing. This attitude is why so many people with mental health problems find it difficult to keep and maintain employment - so many question and trivialize any mental health problem as some inherent weakness rather than as a disease, or an injury.

thaumasiotes 3y ago
> Sometimes someone is trying desperately to not self harm. If that's the goal, taking time off work seems like it would be actively counterproductive.

jpalawaga 3y ago

No, vacation is paid time off so you can enjoy life. Not so you don’t have a mental breakdown at work. Put differently, mental health is health too.

aikinai 3y ago
A perfectly healthy person can get a cold, need a day or two off, and then be back at 100%. I don't think a day or two off is going to take someone from the verge of a mental breakdown, to 100% mentally healthy. So they're not really equivalent.
- r2_pilot 3y ago
  >I don't think a day or two off is going to take someone from the verge of a mental breakdown, to 100% mentally healthy. Fuck this attitude. I've avoided burnout by taking short-notice leave, a day at a time. I have used it to get clothes ready for the next work day, cleanup house, take care of my dog, play video games, or pursue hobbies. It keeps my mental health at a reasonable level. Maybe not 100% but you can't really put a percent on physical health either. And it's easier to take one day to recover(going from e.g. 20% to 80%) than to need months of recovery when you do get totally burned out.
  - sudosteph 3y ago
    That's been 100% my experience as well. The real choice for me is "do I want to sit in front of my keyboarding spiraling down further and being mostly useless (and feeling guilty about that), or do I want to spend a little time addressing the problem and come back when I can function." Often times even just 3-4 hours is enough to do that. Getting FMLA protection for my chronic health condition has been amazing for that as it removed the guilt I used to feel about taking time, and I'm more productive than I've been in years despite taking a few hours a week. Recovering from burnout is seriously hard and it honestly needs it's own DSM diagnosis at this point.
- foldr 3y ago
  It’s not normal to recover to 100% from a cold after a couple of days. Well enough to work, sure, but not 100%.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

quantified 3y ago

Vacations are for life itself! Some people are super happy working every day, that's their life. Good on them. They might still use vacation for funerals, moving households, other needs of life. If you work to live rather than live to work, they are for doing things that make you happy. Is that mental health? I guess. But that frames the goal as maximum working not maximum life. Think about it, seniority comes with more vacation time. As a "perk", it's desirable on its own. Unless work is inherently unhealthy, and it's a perk to be less unhealthy.

StevenWaterman 3y ago
Additionally, often in europe being sick (including mental health) while on vacation entitles you to replacement vacaction days

nullindividual 3y ago

It’s painful to read this style of attitude to the organ we know so little about. “Mental” health is no different from heart health— it’s a collection of cells, some chemicals, and a bit of electricity. If any of that goes wrong in your heart, do you have the same callous attitude?

ragingrobot 3y ago

What do most jobs give for vacation time? It took me 15 years at my current job to get four weeks. Before that, two. Assuming that two weeks a year is the norm going on other posts here, you feel it's appropriate to go say six months (evenly spacing those vacations) to work every day and the employee be at their best? What if said employee rarely gets physically ill, they should not have access to a day off here and there?

steveBK123 3y ago

I think taking sick days for mental health is exactly what it's for. And within some reasonable amount, it's not unreasonable to take it after a really awful night of sleep or crazy 18 hour shift the day before, etc. With white collar office work we can do remotely, we've all been lulled into taking essentially 0 sick days truly off. I've probably taken an average of 0-1 per year in my career. Most of the time any of us are sick we, at most, offer that we'll be offline a couple hours and login for the rest of the day. Our parents generation had jobs where they accrued 5-7 days/year of sick day, and actually rolled it over like vacation days.. sometimes with no limits, allowing them to retire a year early paid, etc. We've let this all get chipped away to the point that many of us don't even have vacation days that rollover, or if they do, must be used within Q1 and then get zeroed out on March 31st. Never mind a fixed allotment of sick days we can feel comfortable using without suspicion.