Why taking a mental health day could be bad… for your mental health
Taking a day off to ease depression, stress or anxiety is increasingly being offered as a workplace benefit but, asks Katie Rosseinsky, could this just be ‘wellness-washing’ by companies and is it doing more harm than good?
If you’ve ever struggled with a mental health issue, you will know all too well that they can make the simplest of everyday tasks feel insurmountable. Making a phone call or sending an email might sap what little energy you had in the first place; even the most seemingly basic actions can become overwhelming. All of this conspires to make working very difficult indeed – it’s nigh on impossible to project a veneer of efficiency and capability when it feels like everything is falling apart inside your head.
A younger generation of employees is trying to combat this by booking off “mental health” days at work like their older colleagues would call in sick for migraines or a bout of flu. According to a new survey by workplace wellbeing platform Unmind, 49 per cent of respondents had taken time off work due to poor mental health; among workers aged between 16 and 25, this rose to 66 per cent.
This rise can be interpreted in two very different ways. The first is the more optimistic view that this rise in mental health breaks is actually a positive step – that it “can be attributed to greater awareness and reduced stigma surrounding mental health concerns”, as Dr Nick Taylor, Unmind’s CEO and co-founder, puts it. The second, though, is more troubling – that this increase is a symptom of a completely broken work culture where mental health is hailed as a “priority” but is not being tackled in any real way at all.
There are no separate laws in the UK about mental health leave, but employers have a duty of care to support the health, safety and wellbeing of their staff overall. They should also treat mental and physical health issues equally, and if an employee’s mental illness can be classified as a disability – if it has a “substantial adverse effect” on their life, impacts their ability to do day-to-day activities and is expected to last at least 12 months – then they are entitled to longer periods of leave under the Equality Act of 2010.
In addition to this baseline provision, however, some workplaces have started to introduce specific “mental health days”, a practice that Flexa Careers’ CEO and co-founder Molly Johnson-Jones says is “starting to become more mainstream”, citing the example of companies like hospitality software brand Vita Mojo and data platform Prolific as among those offering these dedicated days off, separate from sick leave and holiday entitlement. Sometimes they are branded as “wellbeing days” – in the past they were called “duvet days” (appealing perk or patronising cutesification of mental illness? You decide).
Sounds good, right? In theory perhaps, yes. But the increase in the number of staff taking mental health days could be making it worse on a number of levels – by ignoring the workplace red flags that are contributing to endemic mental ill health and potentially adding to the strain on fellow workers who are left behind to pick up the slack.
Mental health days can be “of limited use if staff only take time off when they reach breaking point”, as Flexa Careers’ Johnson-Jones puts it. There is a significant difference between taking a mental health-related day off as a proactive measure as soon as you notice that you’re struggling and being forced to step back from work because you’ve reached a breaking point. And it’s hard not to wonder in this context whether mental health days are just another part of a culture that encourages us to perform acts of “self-care” in order to distract from the underlying issues that might be really at play. Proactive measures are to be applauded, but reactive measures are likely only to contribute to that vicious circle: burn out, take time off, return to yet more responsibilities building up, rinse and repeat
In the world of work, this might look like an HR programme offering, say, midday yoga classes or free access to a mindfulness app, despite the fact that no one who works there has time to do anything other than make a panicked dash for the nearest Pret during their lunch break. “Providing mental health days, as well as other wellness activities … can form part of a positive mental health strategy but should not be substituted for good quality support,” says Cranfield School of Management’s Professor Emma Parry. “Too often we see employers focusing on these sometimes gimmicky activities, without addressing the root of wellbeing problems within their organisation.”
Just as with “greenwashing” – the process whereby a brand markets itself as more eco-friendly than it actually is to achieve a halo effect – we are now seeing a similar HR phenomenon in our workplaces: “wellness washing”. Many workplaces are talking up a good game when it comes to their company culture and mental health policies, but there’s often a major gap between appearance and reality.
“When you look at what’s happening on the floor, when you look at the policies, there’s a disconnect,” says Dr Mansoor Soomro, senior lecturer in international business at Teesside University.
Last year, a study by Claro Wellbeing found that although 71 per cent of organisations are taking part in mental health awareness initiatives, only 36 per cent of them actually offered “good” or “outstanding” mental health benefits to their employees, according to the staff themselves. You’d also be forgiven for wondering whether some of the budget allocated to now-common practices like Employee Assistance Programmes would be better spent on hiring more staff to shoulder an unmanageable workload, or to cover annual leave and ensure that holidays don’t have to be spent surreptitiously refreshing the Slack app.
Kate Wood, project manager of the University of Derby’s mental health and productivity pilot and Work Health Hub, also points to the concerns many staff have around confidentiality when they make use of some of the mental health initiatives. “My worry is making it a ‘tick box exercise’,” she says – something that companies provide purely so that they can say they have provided it, rather than choosing something that genuinely fits their workers’ specific needs. “You find that nine times out of 10 it is underused and staff won’t use it because of fear of [lack of] confidentiality, of things being fed back, and because it’s not the right type of support,” she adds.
And mental health days for those in need also have the inadvertent impact of putting more pressure on already stressed-out, overburdened employees. “Where’s the ongoing support for those people who might take a heck of a lot on [as mental health points of contact]?” Wood asks, noting that middle managers might feel “sandwiched between demands from the top and pressure from their own team”. In a worst-case scenario, this greater burden from picking up the slack left by absent colleagues might even cause resentment to fester, too, potentially adding to that stigma that still clings to anything related to mental health. Anecdotally, bosses talk about being forced into a tricky position of having to weigh up the wellbeing of their absent staff against the mental health of their remaining team. And those same bosses might not be well–placed or properly trained to manage these potentially sensitive situations either.
Too often we see employers focusing on these sometimes gimmicky activities, without addressing the root of wellbeing problems
PR consultant Billie Dee Williams says that she “used to take mental health sick days only in an absolute crisis – but found that these would always cause more stress than if I had just gone to work”. One well-meaning but misguided boss, she says, would get so worried when she took a mental health day that he’d message her all day ‘checking in’ by email and text”. Eventually, she says, she “learned it was much easier to lie and say I had a migraine”.
Certainly, it feels that an over-reliance on ad hoc days off can also feel like a sticking plaster hastily applied to distract from glaring structural issues – not to mention an oversimplification of vastly complex and diverse mental health problems.
“Let’s assume that you go on that leave, and you come back – unless you have addressed what the issue is … you will be exposed again to the same factors of stress,” says behavioural scientist Dr Alexandra Dobra-Kiel, innovation and strategy director at Behave Consultancy. “So it is likely that you will go back to square one.”
It was much easier to lie and say I had a migraine
Currently, it feels like mental health days are a well-meaning but ultimately muddled and even misguided concept. They allow HR departments to pat themselves on the back over how seemingly understanding they are of their employees, while potentially passing on more stress to managers and workers in the long-term; they’re certainly not a panacea. “I think overall, there’s a lot of good intentions and initiatives, but they really need to be effectively rolled out and supported,” Wood says, otherwise they become “a real token gesture… it just sort of falls by the wayside”.
So is there a way to break out of this cycle? Potentially, yes, but it requires the long, hard and slow slog of genuine culture change, rather than flashy, expensive policies. Taylor says. “Having senior leadership who are transparent and open about their mental health and wellbeing”, he adds, can be “particularly powerful”. Dr Dobra-Kiel agrees: “It comes back to the idea of belonging. When we go into the office and we communicate, it’s a very functional communication. And we need that deeper level.”
If you are experiencing feelings of distress and isolation, or are struggling to cope, The Samaritans offers support; you can speak to someone for free over the phone, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.
If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The Helpline is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.
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