In the times where we have to continuously push ourselves towards bringing out the best at work, it’s common to feel the lack of mental health and concentration. The problem that’s even bigger is people don’t take mental issues as serious as physical ones and often ignore some subtle symptoms of bigger issues.
But there’s a sigh of relief. With more social media influence the world has become smaller and people have come closer than ever. This change has created awareness about a lot of unknown things and among all this mental illness has also got it’s a little bit of due so far.
The fact that people are actually considering mental illness as an issue, gets proved from this sweet incident.
Madalyn Parker, a web developer and engineer wanted to take some time off to bust her emotional stress and wrote an email titled ‘Where’s Madalyn’ to explain why she wouldn’t be in for a couple of days.’
She wrote-
“Hey team,” she began. “I’m taking today and tomorrow to focus on my mental health. Hopefully I’ll be back next week refreshed and back to 100 percent.”
In a reply, CEO Mr. Ben Congleton wrote something which won everyone’s heart.
“Hey Madalyn,” he said. “I just wanted to personally thank you for sending emails like this. Every time you do, I use it as a reminder of the importance of using sick days for mental health – I can’t believe this is not standard practice at all organisations. You are an example to us all, and help cut through the stigma so we can all bring our whole selves to work.”
Checkout the snapshot of the thread-
Happy with her boss’ sweet gesture, Madalyn decided to share the incident with her Twitter followers.
When the CEO responds to your out of the office email about taking sick leave for mental health and reaffirms your decision. 💯 pic.twitter.com/6BvJVCJJFq
— madalyn (@madalynrose) June 30, 2017
When the CEO responds to your out of the office email about taking sick leave for mental health and reaffirms your decision. ?
The tweet soon went viral and people started giving their reactions. Here’s what they said-
1
Agreed. "I want to go hang out with family" and "I need to separate from stressors" are quite different. I want my co to be like yours.
— Matt "summoning arachnogods" Olson (@carnivorous8008) July 1, 2017
2
I took a mental health afternoon at my last job and got passive aggressive documentation about the mental health coverage in our health plan
— Janie Larson (@RedQueenCoder) July 1, 2017
3
https://twitter.com/recarmdran/status/881603921764077569
4
Are y'all hiring
— Funkopedia (@Funkopedia) July 10, 2017
The CEO then expanded his thoughts through a blog post on Medium titled ‘It’s 2017 and Mental Health is still an issue in the workplace’
“I had no idea my response would become so visible.The reactions revealed that my stance on mental health in the workplace is unconventional, to say the least. I started realising how impactful my email had been after I began reading some of the responses to Madalyn’s tweet. Some of the responses brought tears to my eyes. There were so many stories of people wishing they worked at a place where their CEO cared about their health, and so many people congratulating me on doing such a good thing. This should be business as usual. We have a lot of work to do.”
Well, that was indeed a sweet gesture. Don’t you think?
