Source : THE AGE NEWS
By Cathy Bussewitz
Her first panic attack came at a company-wide meeting, right before her scheduled presentation. Carolina Lasso had given many similar talks about her marketing team’s accomplishments. When her name was called this time, she couldn’t speak.
“I felt a knot in my throat,” Lasso said. “My head, it felt like it was inside a bubble. I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see, and it felt like an eternity. It was just a few seconds, but it was so profound, and in a way earth-shattering to me.”
As more younger people enter the workforce, taking time off for your mental health is becoming more common and less taboo.Credit: Stock
Lasso was struggling after a cross-country move followed by a divorce. Her boss suggested a mental health leave, a possibility she didn’t know existed. She worried whether taking time off would affect how her team viewed her or cost her a future promotion, but in the end she did.
“I’m thankful for that opportunity to take the time to heal,” Lasso, 43, said. “Many people feel guilty when they take a leave of absence when it’s mental health-related … There is some extra weight that we carry on our shoulders, as if it had been our fault.”
Despite a fear of repercussions, more adults are recognising that stepping back from work to deal with emotional burdens or psychological conditions that get in the way of their lives is a necessary choice, one that a growing number of employers recognise.
ComPsych Corp, a provider of employee mental health programs and absence management services, encourages its business clients to make the wellbeing of workers a priority before individuals get to a breaking point while also having processes in place for those who require leaves of absence.
“Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, collectively we’ve just been in this constant state of turmoil,” Jennifer Birdsall, the senior clinical director at ComPysch, said. “We just have had this barrage of change and uncertainty.”
Depression, anxiety and adjustment disorder, which involves excessive reactions to stress, were the top three diagnoses of employees who took mental health leaves in the past two years among clients of Alight, a Chicago-based technology company which administers leaves and benefits for large employers.
Structuring leave
A mental health leave can last weeks or months. In some cases, workers get approval to work a reduced schedule or to take short periods of time off when needed, using an approach called “intermittent leave”.
There’s no legal or ethical requirement to tell everyone you work with the nature of your leave.
At most US organisations with 50 or more employees, people can request leaves through the Family and Medical Leave Act. The federal law entitles workers with serious health conditions to paid or unpaid leaves of up to 12 weeks, depending on state and local laws.
In Australia, mental health leave falls under sick leave, which you are entitled to 10 days of each year. Many organisations may offer their own forms of mental health leave, however.
Lasso’s leave lasted six months, and included therapy and travel to India for additional treatment. She returned to her job but decided after a year to leave for good. She later launched a business to train people on fostering a more humane work culture.
A mental health leave is “not only OK, but it can really unlock new possibilities once we have the time to do the work — therapy, medication, whatever it is — and have enough distance from work to be able to reconnect with ourselves,” Lasso said.
Talking openly about struggles
A social stigma around mental health challenges causes many people to avoid seeking treatment or requesting a leave of absence. Newton Cheng, director of health and performance at Google, hopes to change that by sharing his own struggles.
His first self-disclosure happened during the pandemic, when a senior manager invited employees at a meeting to share how they were doing. When it was his turn, Cheng started crying.
He explained he was struggling to live up to his expectations of himself as a father and didn’t know how to turn things around.
“It was just totally horrifying to me because, one, I had just cried in front of my coworkers and I was definitely taught as a professional — and as a man — you do not do that,” Cheng recalled. “And then two, I had never really articulated and said out loud those words. I hadn’t even allowed myself to think that. But now they’re out there and I had to face them.”
Colleagues responded by relaying their own struggles, but Cheng’s difficulties continued. By February 2021, he couldn’t get out of bed because he felt paralysed by dread, he said. A therapist said he was showing symptoms of major depression and anxiety.
“I just realised, ‘I’m struggling a lot and this goes pretty deep. I don’t think I can keep just putting duct tape on this. I probably need to take some leave,’” Cheng recalled.
Hoping his decision would benefit others, he announced to 200 people at a conference that he planned to take mental health leave. Instead of derailing the gathering as he feared, his honesty inspired fellow conference attendees to open up.
“It was like a fireworks show,” Cheng said. “They’re like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe he did that.’ Then they forgot about me. But the tone was set. It was like ‘Oh, this is what we’re doing. Let me talk about what’s going on with me, too.’”
Telling managers and colleagues
Before broaching the subject of a mental health leave with a manager, consider the workplace culture and the strength of your professional relationships, Cheng said. He recalls saying, “For my health and wellbeing, and the sake of my family and what’s best for the business, the least risky thing for me to do is to go on leave soon.”
Individuals who suspect an unsympathetic reception can simply say, “I need to go on medical leave. I need time to recover,” he advised. There’s also no legal or ethical requirement to tell everyone you work with the nature of your leave.
“Your coworkers don’t need to know why,” said Seth Turner, co-founder of AbsenceSoft, a leave and accommodation management solutions provider. “They just need to know, ‘I’m going to be here at this time, and I’m going to be gone at this time, and I’ll be back.’”
AP
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