Mental Health issues or Challenges of Life?

Doodledog In the UK, if an employee finds themselves in a situation where the workload or conditions imposed by their employer become unreasonable or unmanageable, and a doctor signs them off due to work-related stress, there are several potential avenues for redress.

The law is designed to protect workers from the undue power of their employers. Decisions are made based on factual evidence, not on hearsay or gossip from colleagues.

Oh yes. Always the usual suspects. Most worked their hours and didn't take advantage.

Yes, I hear that all the time, too.
I used to work with NHS staff, and they certainly had it all sussed out.
Some, of course, not all of them.

My former colleagues didn't threaten to go off sick. They just went. The usual ones. Well known for it. Unfortunately others had to work extra hard or longer hours to cover it

Aveline

I also worked in NHS and recognise the sort of thing MissAdventure's neighbour says. I saw it repeatedly.

That seems to be the big issue in the nhs.
Working out the six month full pay, sick, and when it will be carried over from, and how it can be added on to accrued annual leave.

My eyes are out on stalks at some of the things I hear!!
Telling your manager "if you make me do that I'll go off sick".

I can't conceive of the idea.

I don't think we should institute such a system.

I also worked in NHS and recognise the sort of thing MissAdventure's neighbour says. I saw it repeatedly.

It would be awful to make steps backwards with that kind of thinking, but of course, I've had many a day at work feeling like strangling a lazy colleague, what with her various ailments and ills (which never impeded her leisure time, of course)

The reality is just how much more stressful whole swathes of jobs are compared with say 10 years ago. In some areas of work it was possible to cope better with someone not "pulling their full weight" for all the time as enough staff and pressures were less.
No easy answers there.

Starting a systems of regular "if you're not up too the job you lose it" assessments will pile on more stress.

Interestingly, my neighbour works for the nhs and will openly say (,along with the rest of her department)

"I'll go off sick with stress if.... (fill in the appropriate scenario)

I can't believe what I'm hearing sometimes!

PoliticsNerd

No-one is suggesting that one would not sympathise with real mental illness. (Labradora)

No, just that you are not, as MissAdventure's post points out, qualified to decided what "real" is.

So who carries the can? If someone takes a job but is unable to carry it out, should the employer continue to pay for work they are not getting? If you make a hair appointment, say, and the hairdresser is off because of stress-related anxiety, do you still fork out for the haircut you don't get? If not, why not? what's the difference? Do you pay the window cleaner when he can't come because of depression, and also pay the replacement one to clean the same set of windows? Or do you expect the replacement to step in free, as well as doing his own rounds?

My guess is that you would expect to pay only for the windows that were cleaned, and would find a different hairdresser who could be relied on to cut your hair with only occasional days off. Maybe the salon owner would find cover, but you would only be expected to pay once per appointment. If this is the case, do your feelings about people regularly taking time off on full pay only apply to those in professional roles? Why is this?

I may not be qualified to decide whether my colleague was 'genuinely' ill, but as you don't know her or the details, neither are you. It doesn't matter, really. I was paid to do my job, just as she was paid to do hers. Why should I pick up both workloads when she continued to get paid, whether she was off with a broken leg or a mental illness? I'm not a charity. Maybe I wouldn't mind so much in the case of the broken leg, as I would know it was a finite thing, and unlikely to recur every couple of years. I did, however, know that the MH sick periods would happen as soon as the qualifying period to get full salary came round again, and it never failed.

People with poor MH should be treated sympathetically, and and shouldn't be stigmatised. But why should they continue for years in paid roles that they are routinely failing to fulfil?

Most professional jobs require qualifications that are awarded on a competitive basis to those who can prove their capability. The people holding them have accepted that not everyone can do the job, and that their own qualifications are only valuable because others have been screened out. That is why the salaries are often higher than for roles that more people can fulfil. It seems unreasonable to expect that the screening out of unsuitable candidates that got them the job shouldn't apply when it becomes clear that they can't continue with it. Which brings us back to a driver losing his sight, or a dancer losing a leg.

No-one is suggesting that one would not sympathise with real mental illness. (Labradora)

No, just that you are not, as MissAdventure's post points out, qualified to decided what "real" is.

That would mean they'd need to be qualified to decide what was real and what wasn't.
I watched a programme about people with mental health challenges, and they sounded laughable, frankly, until you saw what they meant and how they impacted their lives.

Iam64

I often turn the radio off/shout at it when I hear people talking about ‘my mental health/my anxiety/my depression, when all too often they’re talking about feelings. More accurate description would be ‘ I worry easily’, I’m sad, I’m fed up.
We all have periods when life is tougher for whatever reason. I find the ownership , ie my depression, concerning. It almost sounds like something to nurture.

I’m not dismissing how tough life can be for all of us at times. I’m suggesting being bereaved, sad, fed up etc is very different than clinical depression or anxiety. Even more different than schizophrenia or psychosis.

Al

👏👏👏👏👏

No-one is suggesting that one would not sympathise with real mental illness.

So many of you are claiming to know better than the person you are talking to regarding how they feel. Almost certainly, they are not going to share their deepest feelings with someone who demonstrates such a lack of empathy.

I understand that this perspective may make you feel good about yourself. You have decided that their behavior is wrong while justifying your own as right, dismissing any validity in how they express their feelings. I sincerely hope you never have to experience what they are feeling. If you have had such experiences, I hope you recognise that dismissing their emotions would be both cruel and unkind.

Sadly, I doubt that some will ever be able to empathize. It seems too easy for them to prioritise their own comfort at someone else’s expense. Empathy requires vulnerability, a willingness to understand another's circumstances without judgment, and the courage to confront uncomfortable truths about our own beliefs. It is crucial to cultivate empathy if we aim to create a more compassionate world. We can live along side one another so much better when we approach each other with understanding and support rather than dismissal and judgment.

I think this links in with the thread about abuse/neglect during childhood.

It's clear that within some families, mental heath issues played a huge part within them.

Certainly my mum's father was not "right in the head", although nobody would broach the issue, or attempt to find out why.

It was kept as something that people never spoke about, even neighbours who knew.

Miss A and buttonjugs - good posts, thanks

I suppose its much like the old "bad back".
There's a back that aches a lot of the time, and one that is twisted so awfully out of shape that its virtually impossible to do anything much.

"Mental health" is such a broad spectrum, far too broad for anyone other than a qualified person to advise about.

There is mental ill health in various serious forms, neurodivergence and self absorbed people deciding they need time off or don't seek employment due to their 'mental health'. Less time on the internet and more time in an absorbing job and a lot of people would feel a lot better.

MH issues were always there, it’s just that people felt ashamed to admit it. When I was a child a friends father committed suicide but we were all told he had an accident on his moped. I had undiagnosed autism and crippling social anxiety that led to me refusing to go to school after I started secondary and I was put in care for being ‘out of the care and control’ of my parents. My brother, who I suspect is also on the spectrum, seems to cope with life but he’s an alcoholic behind closed doors. I still have the social anxiety because it’s part of my condition and there is no way to treat it apart from medication. My son also has ASD but is more severely affected than me and has three different medications to keep him functioning. I don’t believe MH is a modern epidemic at all, it’s just that we’re encouraged to be open about it and that is a good thing. Let’s bear in mind, there are fewer opportunities now for young people to aspire to home ownership. When I was younger I bought a house with my husband on a 100% mortgage and we could afford it with me not working because I took care of the children. He worked in a factory. That wouldn’t be possible now.

I've a newish friend who has various anxiety related issues.
They've diminished a fair old bit since we've been friends, though, I have to say.

Not that I'm any expert at all, but I have pointed out that getting anxious is quite normal in some situations, and even quite a good thing because it hones our wits up in a world that's very far removed from going back to our basic instincts.

The fact is, anyone nowadays can say they have e.g. anxiety/depression, and nobody can challenge it. It would seem to be the modern equivalent of the ‘bad back’ of former times, that wasn’t provable/disprovable either.

While I do know that there are genuine cases, I do think that some people have come to think that unless they’re happy all the time, they have some MH issue.

I dare say we all get anxious/worried/feel somewhat ‘down’ from time to time, but to most of us, it’s something we just have to cope with - often it will eventually pass.

Indeed MayBee. The only way I can describe it is that it's as though you have been lifted up and dropped on another planet. You no longer know who you are and you feel nothing. It's terrifying.

Kate1949

Real mental health issues are hellish.

I often think that it’s a bit like someone saying they have the flu when they actually have a bad cold; they don’t realise just how ill you are with the flu. And someone that doesn’t suffer from actual depression doesn’t understand just what depression is like; I know I don’t. When I worked at a surgery some doctors seemed to hand out anti depressants very easily but one doctor felt that sometimes the things that are happening to you need to be worked through without them.

Not the same thing, really, but I feel much the same about my daughter dying.

I can talk about it until the cows come home, but I'll never feel less bereft than I did on the day she died.
She didn't inflict that on me, though.

So the thought of someone deliberately hurting their own small child, well...
I'd like to think I may have a small idea - coupled with the fact that my mums childhood was an absolute nightmare, and it was there, bubbling just beneath the surface, never ever forgotten.