To think that a trend is starting here

jeanie99

I have had problems in my life with mental health and the last thing you do is put yourself in a stressful situation. It's just unthinkable you would know you couldn't cope.
Everyone is using this statement these days to get out of whatever situation they are in.

You are at least the second person who has declared they have lived with mental health issues and then castigated others who are trying to resolve theirs.

It's not a good look to be honest.

“ Everyone is using this statement these days to get out of whatever situation they are in.” Everyone ?
Whatever situation ?

Germanshepherdmum "some people have plenty of appetite for it and can even spend time looking up statistics of people who have joined the forces."

I guess some of us are the kind of people who look for facts to inform our opinions and some aren't.

I have had problems in my life with mental health and the last thing you do is put yourself in a stressful situation. It's just unthinkable you would know you couldn't cope.
Everyone is using this statement these days to get out of whatever situation they are in.

Well fine Simone!
I was so pleased for her, though my heart was in my mouth all the way through because I heard she had spatial awareness problems as part of the stress. I’d rather fall over on the floor than the beam!

Here is a 5-minute programme from two men who are involved in sports, on mental health and the pressures in sport.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09qwt78

Lucca

Well done Simone Biles coming back for a great performance on the beam

Wonderful to see her back. ?????

Yes, brilliant news

Well done Simone Biles coming back for a great performance on the beam

Bit off topic but stick with me...

My dad was the Time and Motion man in a factory where I had a summer job, to begin with the others didn't know he was my dad. When he arrived with his stopwatch the workers had all sorts of tricks for making the job look harder than it was, and to make it look like it took longer than it did, because that way they thought they were making it easier for themselves to make their bonus.

What they'd forgotten was that my Dad had worked on the factory floor and knew what the tricks were, and how to do the job properly.

Similarly, anyone who thinks they are deceiving HR by playing the system is just deluded, really, and isn't achieving what they think they are. HR almost certainly have the measure of them.

You could be right, Galaxy, but the procedure was available on the website for all to see ?. Most of us ignored it, as we were absent only when necessary so procedures were irrelevant, but my colleague knew every dot and comma of it.

I would guess then that HR were working their way through the process if she was aware of that. I was a manager for quite a long time, I was often aware that people were having a moan about a member of staffs sickness record, they quite rightly had no idea what was happening with regard to that member of staff in terms of capability procedures.

I don't know about a Bradford number, but there was a system in place which flagged to HR when someone had so many days off in a rolling period.

My colleague was very aware of this and sat with a calendar working out whether she could be off on a particular day. She was quite open about it.

I was just about to write something similar MissA.

There are regulations about how an employer needs to make reasonable compromises about helping a disabled or ill person stay in the workforce if they can. If they follow these, they won't lay themselves open to accusations of discrimination. If an organisation is not living up to its duties, it's not right to blame the individual person.

If someone is having months of time off that should be flagged up (Bradford Number, is it? Someone will know....), as should repeated patterns of absence. As individuals we don't generally know a person's circumstances but we need to press HR to take the responsibility.

I agree, MissAdventure, but that rarely happens, particularly in the public sector.

HR tends to fight shy of laying themselves open to being accused of discrimination, and as long as the work is being done, then on the whole they don't get involved. When someone is on a professional contract there is always a clause that says 'and any other duties as become necessary' in the role outline, and covering for absent colleagues comes under that.

No reasonable person would object to doing someone else's work an odd time, or even for an extended period if it is a one-off; but when the same person is away once or twice a month when they don't want to do something, and also has months off at a time on a regular basis it wears thin.

I don't think I am an unreasonable person, and I am more than willing to help others where I can. I do not, however, think that it is fair that anyone should be expected to run themselves into the ground to save someone else from having to undertake tasks that don't suit them.

Surely these issues are for the HR department to sort out? (Assuming a company has one)
If not, then the person running the company should be dealing with it, one way or another.

It's too much to expect others to take on a whole role and add it to their workload, and too much to expect a genuinely ill person to have to worry about the workplace.

In the above post, I am assuming that the hypothetical barrister is on a salary as opposed to being paid by the case. It is an entirely hypothetical situation to make a point, not intended to be forensically examined?.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect disabled people to prioritise their work colleagues in the event that they have to go off sick for some reason - given that their disability will likely result in more sick leave than average

Nor do I, any more than anyone should. But there comes a time when anyone - disabled (which my colleague was not) or otherwise should have the decency to realise that if they are stressed by the day to day tasks that their job entails to the point that they are off work as often as they are there, then (a) they are not fulfilling their obligations to their employer and (b) that they are placing an unfair burden on their colleagues, and find another role. Not a lesser role, and not an unskilled role, or any of the other words you put in my mouth, but a different role that does not stress them.

Different tasks stress different people. You don't like it when I give examples, and I can't spell out what I am getting at in the case of my colleague so my hands are tied, but I'll try one more time:

Many people find public speaking stressful - I think it is one of the top phobias. If someone takes a job as a tour guide, or a barrister, both of which involve public speaking as a matter of routine, but goes off sick every time they have to do it, do you think that their colleagues should have to do their job for them, or do you think that they should find a different job? It would be good if you could answer this yes or no.

If yes, why do you think someone should get a barrister's salary when they are not going to court?

Would they not be better suited to working as a legal secretary? You might see this role as 'lesser' than that of a barrister, but if it is better suited to someone who is not able to speak in public, as their own role requires, what is your rationale for not suggesting that their legal expertise would not be better used doing that instead?

Sorry, posted too soon. We also hear a lot these days about top athletes having access to the facilities to look after their mental health - sports psychologists etc. The majority of ordinary people with MH issues don’t have access to this kind of tailored support, and have to do what they can to look after themselves. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect disabled people to prioritise their work colleagues in the event that they have to go off sick for some reason - given that their disability will likely result in more sick leave than average. Obviously you do what you can to mitigate things, but that’s not always possible. It doesn’t mean that disabled people should take on lesser roles because there’s a chance that their body may let them down at some point and inconvenience others. I am not deliberately misreading what you post - forgive me, but this seems to be the essence of what you’re saying.

Your OP acknowledged that this is a difficult topic to discuss without being flamed, and you said that it was reasonable to expect Simone Biles to ensure that she was ‘mentally and physically prepared’ for the Olympics before taking the place.

I didn’t actually say that it was reasonable - I was trying to present the issue without being judgemental and asking what others thought. And you DID ascribe the lack of employers offering sick pay to people like your colleague - who obviously had mental health issues. That’s a generalisation and in my last post I was trying to point out that it isn’t always the case.

Are you deliberately misreading what I am saying?

I am not suggesting that it is the fault of disabled people that some employers don’t give sick pay?.

I am saying that when people take time off because they don’t want to do anything they find stressful it causes problems in the workplace. I don’t know or care whether this is because they are skivers or because they suffer from fragile mental health - the impact on others is the same. If they are paid to do a job but are unable to do it on a regular basis they should leave.

We have established that we are not able to diagnose MH issues in others on here. Neither are we able to assess the impact on MH of having to do someone else’s work as well as your own. You judged that this comes down to ’whining about having to do a bit of extra work’ when in the case I describe it was significantly more than that, and caused serious problems for me and for the other affected colleague. We had stressful workloads ourselves as well as family responsibilities etc, and for this to be increased by 50% on a regular basis was impossible for us and we both suffered as a result.

But you judge away. You weren’t there, you don’t know, and it is clear that you don’t care about the impact on others. Fair enough.

Your OP acknowledged that this is a difficult topic to discuss without being flamed, and you said that it was reasonable to expect Simone Biles to ensure that she was ‘mentally and physically prepared’ for the Olympics before taking the place. I still don’t see the difference between this and expecting people in less public roles to do the same, or leave if it turns out that they misjudged their capabilities.

I’m not sure what to say to that, really, apart from the fact that it is because of people like my colleague that many employers don’t offer paid sick leave to all staff

I worked for an employer who introduced a sick leave policy offering ten days paid sick leave to all employees - no sick note needed, no questions asked. After that a doctors’ note had to be provided to qualify for sick pay. It was intended to make things easier for people who had minor ailments, short hospital stays etc,. It didn’t take long for these days to be casually referred to as ‘the flying ten’ and almost every employee used them up, regarding them as an addition to their annual leave. To my knowledge none of these people were disabled - either physically or with MH problems, but there was regular disruption caused by people phoning in sick, when you knew damn well they were ‘duvet’ days. The facility was withdrawn and from that point on, if you went off sick you had to claim SSP. Not really the fault of anyone with a disability - just selfish, entitled people wrecking it for everyone else.

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GagaJo

Lucca

I don’t like that expression “playing the mental health card” anymore than I like “plying the race card” or “ woke “ or “PC gone mad”.

I agree Lucca, mostly.

I have a friend who has bipolar. She is fine, most of the time, including for the last two years, working overseas and unable to travel to see family. But at times, maybe once every two or three years, her bipolar rears up and she has to have a substantial amount of time off work to battle it. When she's in the middle of it, she is probably what most people once would have thought of as being insane. It is very distressing to witness. She's also a suicide risk. When she is well, she is a very productive employee, great at her job.

I also have a couple of friends who have retreated into MH issues for other reasons. One, a married woman, who has never worked, I think uses it as 'ladies' did historically, to enable her to stay on her sofa and still command attention. The other, a very lonely woman, for similar reasons. I don't deny they both have problems, but I think one would be helped by having a job and the other by having a partner. I have sympathy for both of them of course. But they are not in the same category as my first friend, who is severely disabled at times by her illness and yet who strives to live as normally as possible.

Having read your extremely good description of a someone functioning with bipolar disease I am shocked to see the way you can diagnose and proscribe for the issues you other "friends" are coping with.

Whitewavemark2

Alegrias1

Can I play my " human being who recognises and supports others in difficulties" card?

Or else my "believes the youth of today would be as likely as any others in history to do their duty if needed" card?

I’ll join that card club

Me too.

Having a period of mental illness or a lifetime of mental disorders is something we can sympathise with and try to support and understand as much as we are able.

Being someone bitter, dismissive and stigmatising deserves to be told that is completely out of order.