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Mental Health Matters

Shifting the stigma surrounding mental health days is crucial.

By Kurt MasonPublished about a year ago 3 min read
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Mental Health Matters
Photo by Gadiel Lazcano on Unsplash

For some, the idea of calling out of work can be an incredibly stressful thing. While employees exist who don’t think twice about taking a day off, there are countless others who work themselves into a frenzy at the prospect of all that comes with calling out of work. The prevalence of burnout in the workplace has risen to a point where it has become a national, perhaps even global, conversation. Employees are working like never before as the long lists of demands and expectations seem to be continually growing. People call out of work for a variety of reasons: vacations, sickness, appointments, emergencies, but the one that seems to have the most stigma is the idea of taking a mental health day. Why? Why are we taught to ignore the warning signs of our health in regards to our mental state?

Although we have made tremendous progress in terms of openly talking about and accepting mental health, there is still a cloud of stigma, stereotype, and negative ideology surrounding the topic that we have yet to address. For many employees, the daily stressors that come with working 40+ hours a week seem to build and build--and we all know that the two days we get off each week are so filled with necessary chores that there is seldom any time to fully unwind and recover from the workweek. The traditional idea of the standard workweek is something that has begun to fluctuate, especially since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, but for many, the Monday to Friday grind is the only option. Countless businesses and corporations are making small shifts to become more responsive to employee burnout and mental health, and many places have even adjusted the expectations of the workday to reflect the truth that a person’s physical body doesn’t need to be behind a desk in order to be productive, but there still seems to be something blocking the pathway to true employee freedom.

I was always taught that you went to work no matter what. Unless you were actively sick or faced with a true emergency, it was your responsibility to be at work, but there are times when the idea of getting out of bed and facing the humdrum and monotony of the day are just too much. It is in these moments when many employees have to decide whether to call out of work or sacrifice their mental health. Other nations have adopted a much more responsive and proactive approach to employee burnout and mental health that give agency to employees to make decisions as professional adults in regards to productivity, but it seems as if the USA has its head in the sand regarding the stigmatization of employee advocacy. We have all been told to “take care of ourselves,” but then are often given the runaround when absent from the workstation.

Calling out of work can induce a host of anxiety inducing thoughts and feelings, but that shouldn’t be a reason to put your mental health on the line. Employees have been trained to believe that service to their employer should come before all else, but that isn’t true. As people begin to feel more and more overworked, underpaid, and under-appreciated, the need to simply take a day away from the workplace is crucial. For many, there is a level of guilt associated with taking a sick day when you aren’t “sick,” but that guilt is getting in the way of giving your mind what it is desperately asking you for–a break.

It is important to normalize mental health days and have an open conversation about their importance in terms of workplace morale and productivity. Working towards creating an employer/employee relationship that acknowledges the importance of mental health and that recognizes how to implement preventative burnout measures will forever change the workforce for the better.

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About the Creator

Kurt Mason

Teacher • Writer • Reader

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