should you tell your boss you’re taking a mental health day?

A reader writes:

I work in a healthcare-adjacent job with a pretty generous leave policy. When folks are going to take a sick day, it’s our practice to drop a note into Teams and say, “Not feeling well, taking a sick day, contact X about Y if it’s urgent, see you tomorrow I hope.” Sometimes folks will add a bit more info — saying they have a migraine or they caught the flu going around, etc. — but there’s nothing along the lines of needing to justify it to your manager or your team. If you’re sick, you’re sick and you take your leave.

What I’m wondering about: quite often younger employees will specifically note that they are taking a mental health day when they call (or rather, message) in sick. Is that advisable? I’ve spoken with peers about this and they were also taken aback by the (mostly) Zoomers who often do this and felt that it’s an overshare.

On one hand, I appreciate that they are taking care of themselves and I suppose it’s nice to normalize self-care around mental health, especially since we work in an adjacent field. On the other hand, it seems like an overshare to me. I’ve had my struggles with mental health and totally support people using PTO however they want. But it seems … weird to share this info. Does “mental health day” mean you are dealing with suicidal ideation (or similar) or it’s just been a rough month? If you took a mental health day on Monday, do I need to treat you with kid gloves on Tuesday? What if there’s a tough conversation that needs to be had, or a ton of work that needs to be done quickly? I would hold back on doing that if it was a person’s first day back from something like bereavement leave. But if it was after a physical sick day, I’d assume that the person is back in the office and prepared to carry on as usual.

Do managers owe it to employees, especially more junior ones, to say, “Hey, you never owe an explanation about PTO, and sometimes saying ‘mental health day’ can read a little unprofessional, even if it shouldn’t”?

You can read my answer to this letter at New York Magazine today. Head over there to read it.

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