Madalyn Parker wanted to take a couple of days off from work. She didn’t have the flu nor did she have plans to be on a beach, drinking mojitos under a palm tree.
Parker, a web developer from Michigan, wanted to take a few days off work to focus on her mental health.
Parker lives with depression. And, she says, staying aware of his mental health is absolutely crucial.
“The bottom line is that mental health is health,” she says via email. “My depression stops me from being productive at work in the same way that a broken hand would stop me because I wouldn’t be able to write very well.”
Photo courtesy of Madalyn Parker.
Madalyn Parker was honest with her colleagues about her situation.
He sent an email to his colleagues telling them the sincere reason he was taking the time off.
“Hopefully,” he wrote to them, “I’ll be back next week refreshed and 100%.”
Shortly after the message was sent, the CEO of Parker’s company responded:
“Hello Madalyn,
I just wanted to thank you personally for sending emails like this. Every time I do it, I use it as a reminder of the importance of taking advantage of sick days for mental health. I can’t believe this isn’t standard practice in all organizations. “You are an example to all of us and help eliminate the stigma so we can all put our full effort into work.”
“When the CEO responds to your out-of-office email about sick leave for mental health reasons and reaffirms his decision. 💯”
Moved by her CEO’s response, Parker posted the email exchange on Twitter.
The tweet, posted on June 30, 2017, has since gone viral, racking up 45,000 likes and 16,000 retweets.
“It’s nice to see some warm and fuzzy feelings circulating the internet for once,” Parker says of the response to her tweet. “However, I am absolutely blown away by the magnitude. I wasn’t expecting so much attention!”
However, even more impressive than the tweet’s reach were the heartfelt responses it garnered.
“Thank you for giving me hope that I can find a job like I am.” one person wrote, who talked about living with panic attacks. “That’s fucking incredible.” intervened in another. “What a fantastic CEO you have.”
Some users, however, questioned why there needed to be a difference between vacation time and sick days; after all, one askedAren’t holidays meant to improve our mental well-being?
That ignores an important distinction, Parker said: both in how we perceive sick days and vacation days and in how that time away from work is distributed. in fact being spent.
“I took a whole month off for partial hospitalization last summer and that was sick leave,” he said. wrote back. “I still felt like I could use vacation time because I didn’t use it and it’s a separate concept.”
Many users were surprised that a CEO was so understanding of an employee’s mental health needs.
They were even more surprised that the CEO grateful To her for sharing her personal experience in caring for her mental health.
After all, there is still a huge stigma associated with mental illness in the workplace, which prevents many of us from talking to our colleagues when we need help or need a break to focus on ourselves. We fear being seen as “weak” or less committed to our work. We might even fear losing our job.
Ben Congleton, CEO of Parker’s company, OlarkHe even joined the conversation himself.
In a blog post about HalfCongleton wrote about the need for more business leaders to prioritize paid sick leave, fight to curb the stigma surrounding mental illness in the workplace, and see their employees as people first.
“It’s 2017. We’re in a knowledge economy. Our jobs require us to perform at peak mental performance,” Congleton wrote. “When an athlete gets injured, he sits on the bench and recovers. Let’s get rid of the idea that somehow the brain is different.”
This article originally appeared on 07/11/17.
