Mental Health issues or Challenges of Life?

Yes, I know. I was a union rep for years.

I ask again - do you pay your hairdresser if s/he doesn't cut your hair? Or pay twice so that your windows get cleaned if your window cleaner is too anxious to clean them?

Aveline

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

As with Aveline and Doodledog, my employer provided good terms and conditions. Also as with Aveline and Doodledog, there were a small number of staff members who would take the 6 months sick leave and return, only to repeat the pattern as soon as they qualified for six months again.

I know other colleagues who once had an extended period of sick leave, definitely work related anxiety/depression. Our employer provided therapy and excellent return to work support. It’s rather rude to suggest those of us pointing out the difference are somehow too dim to know the difference

It must be a tightrope for employers to tread, I must say.
A fine line.

PoliticsNerd

I, too, am familiar with this scenario. Unfortunately, I have firsthand experience with the devastating effects of depression. Dickens' poignant descriptions of the condition and its impact on a person's sense of self are hauntingly accurate.

I also agree with Iam that many individuals have witnessed colleagues repeatedly taking time off due to mental health issues. However, it's essential to acknowledge Doodledog's crucial point: the actual cause of this problem lay, and often lies in underlying workplace issues, in this case understaffing. This, rather than the individuals themselves, is often the root cause of the pressure and stress placed on colleagues.

It's essential to distinguish between those who are mentally ill and the often-inadequate workplace systems that can exacerbate their conditions. While individuals who become mentally ill are not responsible for poor workplace systems, it's clear that systemic problems, such as understaffing, can play a significant role in the development of mental health issues.

Among my daughter, her colleagues and her friends working in the retail industry at management levels, any health problems they have including mental health problems are a direct result of understaffing.

Some of the health problems suffered by her colleagues are quite serious - thrombosis, neuralgia, hypertension, severe vertigo and nervous breakdown at work due to the stress.

The company made so many people redundant and expect those remaining to pick up the workload. The hours they must work are bordering to being illegal in my opinion. Needless to say my daughter will be handing in her letter of resignation soon.

With Rachel Reeves implementing the increase in minimum wages and employers’ NIC contributions soon, the situation is only going to get worse.

This is all barrel-scrapping irrelevance Doodledog. However:

I am not my hairdressers employer and they will either ring me to rearrange the appointment, or suggest someone else does it. Their pay is not my responsibility.

I don't pay my window cleaner directly so this would not occur but I imagine many are self-employed so have to shoulder errors themselves.

The few Union Reps I have come across have been kind people with little or no legal training. If a problem couldn't be resolved simply, I would use a solicitor.

Any more strawman arguments?

Scribbles

Never thought I would agree with Tony Blair about anything but he's absolutely right about this.
I'm not taking anything away from the truly unwell who deserve all our compassion but it's clear there are many folk out there who need to get over themselves and grow a backbone.

I agree with you 100%. I often get annoyed when people bring up mental health as an issue when it’s clear it’s just normal every day niggles that are the problem.
People who genuinely have mental issues deserve all the sympathy they can get. Those who haven’t should be very glad of that!

Crossstitchfan

Scribbles

Never thought I would agree with Tony Blair about anything but he's absolutely right about this.
I'm not taking anything away from the truly unwell who deserve all our compassion but it's clear there are many folk out there who need to get over themselves and grow a backbone.

I agree with you 100%. I often get annoyed when people bring up mental health as an issue when it’s clear it’s just normal every day niggles that are the problem.
People who genuinely have mental issues deserve all the sympathy they can get. Those who haven’t should be very glad of that!

The problem is - how do we know who is or isn't "genuine"?

I've had one, and only one, bout of clinical depression many years ago. Life was no more difficult for me than for millions of other people at that time yet, for some reason, I couldn't cope with the challenges if, indeed, it was in fact anything to do with life's 'challenges'.

Would I have been considered genuine?

I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what it was that caused the depression, all I remember of that period is an overwhelming sense of fear, but of what - I haven't a clue.

To an outsider, I may have appeared to be one of those who should have just learned to cope with the "niggles" - yet I was put on powerful - and dangerous - drugs, and for a short period, was institutionalised.

Would you know if I was genuine? It's not a call I would like to make on anyone else.

I’m not suggesting there aren’t genuine episodes of clinical depression or anxiety that could hit any one of us. I mentioned earlier good colleagues this happened to. I’m suggesting a small number of individuals take advantage of good terms and conditions, in fact exploit them and colleagues. This is very different than genuine physical or mh problems.

How difficult that must have been for you Dickens, so out of the blue and inexplicable. One would hope that no one would dismiss that kind of episode as fake. If a person is not fully functioning and can't cope, then of course there needs to be sympathy, even if there can't be true understanding. I don't think Tony Blair, or anyone on here, would have put you in the shirker category.
Were you actually genuine, is such a difficult question to even contemplate. The suffering was real to you at the time, and I guess that's all we can go by.

I agree, Iam64, that a small number of individuals take advantage and that has a knock on effect in any environment, from the workplace, to school etc. The worry is, that if this attitude becomes more prevalent, more people might copy it and adopt it themselves, thus leaving more and more colleagues stressed and quite frankly, irked and resentful.

RosiesMaw2

I’m surprised nobody has commented on this yet.
Speaking to former Downing Street adviser Jimmy McLoughlin on his Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future podcast, 71-year-old Sir Tony Blair has declared: “I think we have become very, very focused on mental health and with people self-diagnosing. We’re spending vastly more on mental health now than we did a few years ago. And it’s hard to see what the objective reasons for that are.”
“Life has its ups and downs and everybody experiences those. And you’ve got to be careful of encouraging people to think they’ve got some sort of condition other than simply confronting the challenges of life.”
I hesitate to raise my head above the parapet but have wondered how well-equipped we are as a nation especially the younger generation, the so-called “Generation Z” to cope with “the challenges of life”
Goodness knows our parents’ and grandparents’ generation faced much worse - war, hardship including unemployment without the benefits system of today, no NHS, no CH, hard physical labour, few cars, few of the domestic appliances we now know, to name but a few.
Has he got a point?

Yes he has got a point, most definitely!
And the really bad thing about all the self diagnosing and self centred mental angst and navel gazing is that real poor MH cases are pushed even further to the back of the queue.
MH resources haven’t been good enough for a long time now but are getting worse with those who are pushing for a label.

I felt like that about a certain teen boy, who shall remain nameless.
All through his schooling, particularly towards the end, I had tried to take up the offer of counselling that the school was so proud of.

Each time, he was unable to speak to anyone because he was at the end of a queue, with other children who needed a bit of space to chat.

Eventually I blurted out that I felt his issues may be a little deeper than other children's, or at least on par with them.

He,did never get anyone to chat to, though.

Always at the end of the queue.
(And still with perhaps unresolved issues)

That's very sad MissAdventure. It's a pity they didn't have a sort of triage system going.

It is, Aveline.
As I say, I think he has some issues, still, which he will hopefully resolve in his own time, now.

I feel worn out with it all, and its neither of our faults.

escaped

How difficult that must have been for you Dickens, so out of the blue and inexplicable. One would hope that no one would dismiss that kind of episode as fake. If a person is not fully functioning and can't cope, then of course there needs to be sympathy, even if there can't be true understanding. I don't think Tony Blair, or anyone on here, would have put you in the shirker category.
Were you actually genuine, is such a difficult question to even contemplate. The suffering was real to you at the time, and I guess that's all we can go by.

Were you actually genuine, is such a difficult question to even contemplate. The suffering was real to you at the time, and I guess that's all we can go by.

I was allocated a psychiatrist and he, looking at my medical history, came to the conclusion that it was likely caused by the progestin-only contraceptive pill. My GP didn't agree there was any connection, but I stopped taking the pill, tapered off the nasty anti-depressant (Parnate), terminated the EC therapy, and within a couple of weeks, felt normal again.

I think the Psychiatrist was right - it would certainly explain why the episode came on suddenly out of nowhere, and never re-occurred.

I wonder how many other women have been similarly affected?

Recent studies have shown a link between the contraceptive pill and depression, though many disagree with the findings (correlation is not causation etc). But I'm not the only woman who found that on stopping the pill, the depression lifted, as the studies have indicated.

And how many GPs, like mine at the time, would even consider the connection?

MissAdventure

It is, Aveline.
As I say, I think he has some issues, still, which he will hopefully resolve in his own time, now.

I feel worn out with it all, and its neither of our faults.

Am sure you did what you could, it’s always hard going when a child loses a Mother at an early stage of life.He will recognise how hard it was for you when he’s a bit older.💐

www.childline.org.uk/get-support/1-2-1-counsellor-chat/

MissAdventure Childline offer support for young people up to the age of 19.

Thank you, but I know he would flatly refuse to speak to anyone now.
He should have been "caught" younger, I think.

He was open to persuasion then.

There is no need to be rude, PoliticsNerd. I have repeated that I fully accept that there are very genuine cases of mental ill-health, and whilst I am not answerable to you about it, I can assure you that I was ’kind’ when approached in my Union rep capacity- it was, after all, an elected role, so if I hadn’t been it would have been short-lived. However it was rarely the people with poor sick records who needed my advice. The cards were stacked in their favour. It was the colleagues whose own MH was suffering because every time there was a difficult period at work they were left doing their own job as well as that of their workmates who stayed at home. What is so difficult to understand about that?

As for ‘scraping the barrel’, it is as I thought. You would not pay for a service you didn’t receive. Fair enough. But you rather ‘unkindly’ expect the salon owner to find a way to provide it anyway. That is exactly the point I am making. Someone has to do it or the business loses out and ultimately jobs are lost and you have to find another hairdresser.

This topic comes up regularly, as it affects a lot of people. When it does, the answer from many is to explain that they have had incidences of mental ill-health and were not skiving. I don’t disbelieve them for one minute.

Mental illness is real. Nobody on this thread has said otherwise.

What some of us are saying, in response to the OP about TB’s comments about life’s ups and downs, is that whilst those with clinical conditions need protection in the workplace, those who respond to routine stress by staying at home (often for months) simply pass that stress to colleagues and should consider whether they are in the right line of work. I don’t see a contradiction there.

You've given us a good idea of your situation many times Doodledog (ie feeling dumped with a workload under particular circumstances), but what do you think could be done?

MissAdventure

Thank you, but I know he would flatly refuse to speak to anyone now.
He should have been "caught" younger, I think.

He was open to persuasion then.

As I understand it the "chat" is online, not face to face or even voice to voice, if you see what I mean. So a bit more anonymous.
And there's a message board to "talk" to other young people.

It must be a hard situation for both of you though.

Oh thank you.
I'll try to pass it on to him, but don't hold out much hope.

That's the issue really, isn't it, when the world and his friend need counselling for whatever problems they have?

Nobody wants to push ahead and openly say "sorry, but my/our issues are more worthy than yours".

I completely understand your posts Doodledog. I've seen the same situations myself.

What some of us are saying ... is that whilst those with clinical conditions need protection in the workplace, those who respond to routine stress by staying at home (often for months) simply pass that stress to colleagues and should consider whether they are in the right line of work. ... (Doodledog)

I understand the perspective about workplace dynamics, but it's crucial to recognise that not everyone experiences stress in the same way. What may seem like 'routine stress' to one person can be overwhelming and unmanageable for another, especially concerning mental health issues. Colleagues often cannot accurately gauge the severity of someone else's struggle—whether it's ongoing stress or something more serious like suicidal thoughts.

If you're concerned about prolonged periods off work and how this impacts the team, it might be helpful to discuss these concerns with your trade union. They can provide insights on how to create a supportive workplace environment while addressing these challenges effectively. Colleagues discussing amongst themselves or on GN just how judgmental they feel, just adds to the problem, not to a solution.

I wonder if posters could just read what is written and reply to that, not some imaginary reply that they wish to attack? Who does pay for a service they dont receive Doodledog?

I was telling you what actually happens. My hairdresser's has long term health issues that are unpredictable. The condition means they suffer from grinding fatigue, depression, allergies, bloating, bladder and bowel issues and muscle and joint pain and more. My hairdresser is trying to continue working while waiting for an operation (it's been postponed severaĺ times) and the salon and her lovely colleagues support her in that. I have always been happy to accommodate them so they can still provide a service to me as a customer and maintain their business. At the same time, I also recognise that the employer has a responsibility to manage their staff and ensure that no one is overwhelmed or taken advantage of so, sometimes the appointment has to wait a few days.

I do NOT blame the hairdresser for their health issues, and instead, I look to the employer to find a solution that works for everyone. As I understand the importance of having a supportive and understanding work environment, I would not expect my hairdresser's colleagues to tittle-tattle behind her back about extra workload (that is for the employer to deal with) or whether she is to be graded on their gossip system as sufficiently ill to be off work. But that doesnt happen. They are not those people.