How to ask your boss for a mental health day

“Mental illness is also not as easy to understand as ‘I fell over, I broke my wrist, it’s in a cast for six weeks, so I need these adjustments at work’.”

We all know the feeling when there are just too many deadlines, too many reports and too many clients. Your job has burnt you out, and you need a day or two to relax. This is what you might call a ‘mental health day’ – a day you take off work to give yourself a break mentally from the stress of your job, and of life generally.

Some people might need a day like this a few times a year. But if you’re mentally ill, taking time off might become a frequent necessity for your psychological wellbeing. But for many people in many jobs, it can be hard to bring up mental illness in the workplace. Why is this?

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To find out I spoke to Jennifer Lobb, a senior clinical advisor at Headspace. When it comes to the negative stigma around mental illness in the workplace, Jennifer points out that it’s in part due to the unique relationship you have with your work and your employer/s. 

“Workplaces consist of transactional relationships,” Jennifer tells me. “You produce a good or a service in exchange for your time. And this is unique to our relationship to work than to the other relationships in our life, that doesn’t require you to give and take in this precisely contractual way.”

Because of this relationship, and the fact that work is based on performance and productivity, taking time off can feel difficult. Plus, a reduction in your capacity to work can make the people you work with react negatively.

Mental illness is so individualised that what one person might need can be very different to what another might need. This makes it difficult for workplaces to standardise the process of giving out mental health days.

“Mental illness is also not as easy to understand as ‘I fell over, I broke my wrist, it’s in a cast for six weeks, so I need these adjustments at work’. With physical injuries, you have a timeframe of what caused it, and when it’s going to get better. And your employer can then better see how to support you in your condition. With mental ill health, you often can’t,” explains Jennifer.

Being open about mental health is also a bigger hurdle for young people who are only just starting out in the workforce. There seems to be a culture of ‘earning your stripes’, proving your work ethic and not making demands or voicing concerns until you’re considered more senior in your company.

So what can be done as an employee?

First of all, know your rights and responsibilities. There’s only so much you have to disclose if you don’t feel comfortable giving your manager all the finer details.

“You actually don’t always have to tell your employer the reason you need to take a day off. It will depend on whether you’re proactively deciding to take a day off later that week for example, or if you’re calling the morning of to say you’re not coming in. It comes down to knowing the procedures. Some workplaces might require evidence of the reason for your absence,” explains Jennifer.

Ultimately, it’s up to your employer to create safe spaces. As Jennifer tells me, it’s their job to foster a feeling of safety for their employees so that they feel comfortable bringing up their personal and professional concerns in the first place (Headspace has some great resources on how to do this).

“All of this plays into how safe an employee feels to bring up their mental health in the workplace. If they feel supported, and know that their issues will be met with compassion and taken seriously, that will create the landscape you’re all working in,” she says.

As an employee, it’s then up to you to decide what conversation you’d like to have with your managers. Jennifer tells me, “It’s about assessing where you are, then what your workplace can do, then coming to the conversation with those thoughts”.

Maybe you need to take a couple of weeks off, or you need a day off every fortnight at your discretion. Maybe there’s an element within the workplace that feels toxic or unhelpful for your mental health that you’d like to raise. 

Think about what things outside of work you can do to support your mental health and wellbeing, and what can be done at work to help. Have that conversation with yourself and then come up with some ideas to take to your management.

“You might phrase it like this: ‘I’m going through a tough time, this is what’s happening for me (if you need or want to disclose this). I’d like to discuss how we can adjust things at work for a period/indefinitely so that I can continue to come in and contribute effectively because I’d really like to be at my best here’,” suggests Jennifer.

As well as helping staff on an individual level, it’s estimated that workplaces that support the wellbeing of their staff have three times less absenteeism than less supportive workplaces. Talk about a win-win.

Of course, there are workplaces that aren’t supportive in this way. Even if you do all the right things as an employee, your boss may just not want to hear it. This speaks to a much bigger socio-cultural problem around the dismissal of mental illness, and a focus on productivity and profit over people.

How do we change this? 

A change will occur if we keep having open, honest and unapologetic conversations about mental health on a regular basis. Employees and employers alike need to prioritise education and awareness of mental wellbeing and reject the shameful feelings mental illness can bring up.

When you become more open with yourself about your mental health struggles and share them with people you trust, you start to see that it’s much more common than you think.