{"id":14152,"date":"2017-07-13T16:19:17","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T10:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/?p=14152"},"modified":"2017-07-13T16:21:27","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T10:51:27","slug":"asking-for-a-day-off-for-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/asking-for-a-day-off-for-mental-health.html","title":{"rendered":"She Asked For a &#8216;Mental Health Day Off&#8217; &#038; Here&#8217;s How Her Boss Responded"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mental health is hardly given any thought in the professional life, if at all. Most people would freely request for a sick leave to get over their viral fever or their indigestion. But hardly anyone dares taking a sick leave for mental health reasons, given the stigma and the fear of judgment around the whole topic.<\/p>\n<p>An American woman and her boss have become unintentional\u00a0heroes in the mental health community&#8217;s fight against stigma.<\/p>\n<p>On 30th June, web developer Madalyn Parker tweeted this email exchange with her boss who also happens to the CEO of the company, Olark.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">When the CEO responds to your out of the office email about taking sick leave for mental health and reaffirms your decision. ? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/6BvJVCJJFq\">pic.twitter.com\/6BvJVCJJFq<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 madalyn (@madalynrose) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/madalynrose\/status\/880886024725024769\">June 30, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>To say that the tweet went viral would be an understatement. At the time of writing this article, the tweet had received over 35000 likes and 11000 shares.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly though, it touches upon the very important issue of workplace sensitisation to mental health issues, and of course breaking the stigma of mental health.<\/p>\n<p>Ben Congleton, the CEO in question was left stunned by the overwhelming support of his email response :<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I wasn\u2019t expecting the exposure, but I am so glad I was able to have such a positive impact on so many people.\u00a0There were so many stories of people wishing they worked at a place where their CEO cared about their health, and so many people congratulating me on doing such a good thing<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s almost impossible to imagine something like this happening here\u00a0in India where\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.assocham.org\/newsdetail.php?id=4918\">over 42% corporate employees<\/a> are known to suffer from Depression, and sensitisation training is so low that even an IT employee of a major MNC is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moneycontrol.com\/news\/business\/it-employee-gets-fired-uploads-conversation-with-hr-on-social-media-2320069.html\">asked to quit <\/a>by 10 AM next morning for &#8220;cost optimisation&#8221;, or else be fired.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re made to feel so silly and guilty if you ever request a sick leave for mental health purposes, that is if you even muster the courage to make the request. Mental health insurance is non-existent, although there are hopes that the ambitious <a href=\"http:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/the-mental-health-care-bill-2016-assured-mental-healthcare-with-dignity.html?yd_source=Blog&amp;yd_medium=internalLinking&amp;yd_content=MentalHealthDayOff&amp;yd_campaign=internalLinking\">Mental Healthcare Bill, 2016<\/a> may change that, for now, it still seems like a distant dream.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s high time that we started seeing a similar, more appropriate attitude towards mental health in our country, don&#8217;t you think?<\/p>\n<p>To quote Mr. Congleton :<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s 2017. I cannot believe that it is still controversial to speak about mental health in the workplace<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Are you struggling with mental health issues?\u00a0We&#8217;re here to help. Talk to an <a href=\"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/?yd_source=Blog&amp;yd_medium=internalLinking&amp;yd_content=MentalHealthLeaveStory&amp;yd_campaign=internalLinking\">Expert at YourDOST<\/a> today.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a style=\"font-size: 10px;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.boredpanda.com\/woman-email-mental-health-day-ceo-response-madalyn-parker\/\">Cover Image Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mental health is hardly given any thought in the professional life, if at all. Most people would freely request for a sick leave to get over their viral fever or their indigestion. But hardly anyone dares taking a sick leave for mental health reasons, given the stigma and the fear of judgment around the whole [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[170],"class_list":["post-14152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-work-related-stress","tag-mental-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yourdost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}