Mental Health Days Are Madness

I've never been able to justify taking a mental health day.

When I say mental health day, I don't mean a personal day or a sick day. A mental health day (as I understand it) is a day spent recovering from stress, anxiety, or any other psychological affliction that would make it impossible to function properly on the job. Having a cold doesn't count – that's a sick day. Nor does having a hangover – you made your bed, now lie in it, so use a sick day or suffer.

Mental health days are becoming increasingly popular. Some point to the state of the economy as a contributing factor – workplace stress and the demand for higher productivity, as well as the lack of job security, and/or the constant threat of layoffs. Others, who are a bit more cynical, see mental health days as just another excuse for skipping work. Don't want to deal with the work piling up on your desk? Call in and say that you're taking a mental health day! It's sunny and you feel like a round of golf? Take a mental health day!

Although I count myself among the skeptics, I will, of course, admit that my own workplace isn't exactly a model of sanity. But is any workplace a model of sanity? Should it be?

Imagine a workplace where no one plays politics, stabs others in the back, delegates crappy jobs, or leaves dirty dishes in the office kitchen and blames it on someone else – i.e., a work environment devoid of the type of behavior that can cause workplace stress. While it may seem like paradise, I don't think that it would actually be conducive to mental health. Most of us expect a certain amount of madness and irregularity around us, and if it wasn't there (thanks to movies like The Stepford Wives), we'd become suspicious and anxious. And, as we're often told, some stress is good for us, and some people even thrive when under stress.

I agree that some things (like personal problems or a death in the family) can make it difficult for one to function on the job. But stress induced by negotiating the egotistical, narcissistic, and apparently psychotic maneuvering going on in your average workplace isn't one of them.

The root of my difficulty with mental health days has to do with both the terminology and their intrinsic value. Mending an actual psychological problem requires more than simply taking the day off and going for a bike ride in the park, or watching repeats of Jerry Springer (though the latter helps to prove exactly how sane, ethical, and well-spoken you are by comparison to Jerry's guests). Mending a psychological problem severe enough to make it impossible to function at work may require repeated visits to a therapist and/or some prescription medication rather than a day off. And if the source of the problem is the work itself, then you probably need to take time to do some self-assessments, career counseling, upgrading, and/or job searching, and get yourself the heck out of there.

Fixing the other stuff – stress, your poor relationship with the pile of work on your desk, your Machiavellian coworkers, your psychotic boss – all that requires is taking a "personal day." (Or finding a new job ASAP.)

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