Because my blog deals with mental health, I decided to write about a policy dealing with mental health for our persuasive policy paper. Mental health is something that is very important in my life and is something that I am extremely passionate about. With that being said, the deliberation I attended before Spring Break was on mental health in the work place. I went to it because it was obviously about mental health and I was interested to see what the group would discuss about that topic.
This particular deliberation caught my eye because I have personally dealt with mental illness, although it was more prevalent when I was younger. However, it is still something I struggle with from time to time and will most likely be something that I struggle with for the rest of my life. I felt that this was a very unique approach on just mental health in general because it was so relevant. I, as many others who battle or have battled mental illness, will mostly likely face this type of situation when we are in the work force so it is important to have some knowledge about it.
One of the proposals they touched on to make the workplace a better environment for employees with mental illness was to add to the number of sick days workers got per year from their employer, rename them to something vaguer, and allow employees to use them when needed. By doing this, the intent was to make it much less stressful and much easier for employees who suffer from mental illness to take days off if they needed and not have to worry about telling anyone why or losing sick days if they actually ended up needed them. Although there were some flaws in this suggestion, I thought that it was incredible and that it would be super beneficial if done the right way. I, as many others, thought that by doing this would not only take a huge burden away from employees with mental illnesses but also change the stigma for mental health in general. So, with that, I wanted to make a policy based off of that idea for my persuasive policy paper because I had a lot of ideas to mold it into something that I think could really work!
Aside from the paper, I think that this was a great topic to post about this week because it wasn’t until attending that deliberation that I really thought about the importance of it. The discussion opened my eyes to things that I had never thought about before and how they would most likely affect me in the near future, whether I had a mental illness or not. When something as significant as having a mental illness disrupts your whole day of both thinking and doing, it is crucial that it is taken seriously when your employee or coworker is really struggling.
With that being said, I hope this was just as much of an eye-opener for you as it was for me. Those who live each day of their lives battling a mental illness are all around us, and sometimes we either don’t notice or don’t take into consideration the struggles they are going through. I am very passionate about this subject and am greatly looking forward to completing my paper on this policy. Thanks for reading!