Taking a mental health day off: A necessity or a luxury?

In today’s fast-paced world, taking a mental health day is more of a necessity than a luxury. Our brain, much like any other organ in our body, can feel fatigue, which leads to stress, anxiety, and burnout. Thankfully we have reached a time when people care about their mental health just as much as their physical health. To understand the importance of mental health days, we speak to two leading therapists about what bosses and managers can do from their side to improve things. 

The concept of taking a mental health day has emerged only recently, and it's probably because of the blurring lines between our personal and professional lives. But taking a mental health day allows you to take a step back, recharge, and recover, which is important especially if your job demands a lot of mental effort. Exerting stress on the brain constantly can impair your cognitive function affecting your memory, attention span, and your ability to make decisions. As mentioned earlier, prioritising your mental health can improve your physical health, reducing your chances of falling sick. A mental health day gives you a break from the load, so you can return to work with more focus, creativity, and productivity. 

What companies should do? 

As previously mentioned, mental health days are a recently developed concept, which is why they are often referred to as casual leave to avoid judgement. Companies should create policies that let employees take mental health days without any or stigma (what one calls casual leave). Offering awareness programs that help people recognise the signs of burnout, along with training the management about mental health can make a big difference. It’s also important to be flexible about how many mental health days employees can take and when they can use them. Options like remote work and flexible hours can help too. Most importantly, organisations should respect boundaries by avoiding work-related messages outside of regular hours.

When someone asks for a holiday, bosses should stop asking ‘Are you sick?’ Doing so makes people lie and come up with an excuse that they’ve fallen ill, or *insert relative with disease* excuse. One can just wake up and not want to go to work, stay at home and do nothing. Eliminate the need to lie. 
Casual leave should be what it actually means, casual. 

Is too much of it a bad thing? 

Too much of a good thing is always bad. Is it concerning if a person takes too many mental health day breaks from work. From a logistical standpoint, there will be a limit because there’s so much work. In an ideal world, it should be as much as you want—days, weeks or even taking a sabbatical. Coming back to reality, getting even 1-2 days will helps the individual unwind. Remember, that something is better than nothing. 

That said, if it’s too much, this pattern and behaviour needs to be looked as a sign that there is some deeper work needs to done. It’s not just about decompressing, but a little more of therapy, reflection, maintenance, medication that needs to be added. Sometimes, it can be taking an off when you’re feeling bad, but there can be problems that you’re not addressing. If this happens too often, or feel that the need is too much, there could be a lot that meets the eye from a distress standpoint. 

Inputs by Sherene Aftab, Psychologist and founder at Serene Hour Counselling & Career Advice Consultancy, and Mehezabin Dordi, clinical psychologist, Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai

Lead image: Netflix

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