Calling in mental health sickies without telling porkies
The biggest stumbling block to dealing with mental health in the workplace, is that no one knows how to talk about it, David Westgate explains.
Words like ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’ strike fear into the hardiest of colleagues, let alone immediate bosses. This, of course, causes significant problems when dealing with that Aussie institution: calling in a sickie.
So may I suggest the following: No longer will those of us who suffer be able to cover mental health issues with words such as, “cold, flu, gastric or migraine”.
It’s not worthy of us.
By the same token, we can’t just dive in at the deep-end by ringing in and saying, “Sorry, won’t be in today. I feel a psychotic episode coming on”.
Instead, from this day forward, the following euphemisms will be recognised by both parties as code for mental health issues:
– Feel like crap
– Bit foggy today
– Lousy as all get-out
– Death warmed over
– Just feel like shit
Feel free to embellish as you wish but from now on, no more deliberate porkies please. Until we are all big enough to call a spade a spade, this will have to do.
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David West has worked in advertising for 35-years. All while suffering from a rollercoaster-like mental illness known as bipolar 1.
He knows what it’s like to be driven by anxieties so strong he’s sacrificed countless weekends to needless work; to be so sleep deprived, his keyboard sometimes resembles a soft downy pillow, and to perform brilliantly in a boardroom one moment, only to find himself crying quietly in a toilet cubicle the next. David is a keynote speaker for the Black Dog Institute and has spoken to organisations such as the NSW Law Society Australian Road Transport Industry, the Treasury and even the Friends and Family of Missing People Police Unit. He’s also a qualified instructor for Mental Health First Aid, serves on an action group for the Australian insurer TAL, has been interviewed by the Australian Financial Review, appeared on the SBS show Insight and has created a workplace program, Club20.