Mental health leave is exactly what it sounds like: It’s when you take a break from work in order to have dedicated time to focus on improving your mental health. Does mental health leave actually help?.What should you do during your mental health leave?.How do you talk to your manager about mental health leave?.What are your options for taking mental health leave?.How do you recognize if you need mental health leave?.That’s what happened with Chauntelle Lewis, a freelance diversity and inclusion consultant and inclusive communities manager, who took a month-long mental health leave from a previous job before eventually changing employers, and with Jordan*, a tech professional in Boston, who experienced “deep burnout” before opting for a mental health leave.īut what exactly is a mental health leave? How can you tell if you need one? And how do you actually handle the process? Here are the real answers-and the real stories-you need to hear. It’s at that point that you might think about taking a mental health leave from work.
You need a bigger solution-one that actually helps you get to the root of the issue. You feel completely drained, exhausted, and even a little hopeless-and you know that neither a quick vacation nor a simple self-care routine are going to right the ship. Or that your stomach’s tied in knots over projects that used to excite you. While they’re absolutely disheartening, these types of hiccups and stressors are a normal part of our working lives.īut what happens when the odd bad day starts to snowball into something bigger? Maybe you’ve found that making it through the workday feels like dragging your feet through wet cement as you struggle to focus on your tasks. You missed an important deadline and are beating yourself up over dropping the ball. You’re convinced you stuck your foot in your mouth during a team meeting and can’t stop replaying the experience in your head. You’ve had them too, right? Your to-do list and inbox feel like a giant game of whack-a-mole you can barely keep up with.