Who Should Handle Mental Health: Employee or Employer?

I've had the opportunity to work in a sector that required my mental abilities while I have to face life challenges. It was a brief time but I learned well enough just how important it is to prioritise one's mental health. The work place is a big world on its own, there is so much to get done that many workers forget to tend to themselves.

Mental health is a part of the human body that tends to be neglected most of the time. I think it's nowadays that we hear of people on social media, doctors and psychologists preaching about prioritising one's mental health. Before now, it was mainly about physical body health and a lot suffered from mental issues unknown.

Today's world is filled with overwhelming lifestyles and work places, people struggle to get by daily responsibilities so it makes the work place one that should consider the mental health of its employees. I remember a company that sent all its employees to the hospital for general check up, a lot of them got scared they'll be fired.

That made me think about this prompt in another light, I'm not sure a company has the whole responsibility over its employees. I think they have only the part of making sure they know the conditions of their employees, create a working environment that favours them to work effectively and make sure to do a routine check.

Mental health of an employee depends mainly on the employee himself. Mental health is made up of the mind and what we feed it by our daily consumption whether by our work, social interactions, family, and the environment we find ourselves. I don't see how the company have to sacrifice more off days for their own reasons.

I may not know how the work environment is for each employee so this might be me saying this out of ignorance of what should really be. Yes, I know mental health is a very important aspect of man's life but I don't think it's the sole responsibility of the company to give more off days for that, it's the employee's own to care for.

An employer should know what causes mental stress on them and sometimes, it's not really the stressful work in the company, it might be their lifestyle after work that is causing it. So what I think is, no employer is entitled to more off days than sick leave. And my main reason is, a few days won't really heal a mental health problem.

Mental health problems require more care than is actually talked about but if companies have to give a lot more days for such, it must be on good evidence that indeed, an employee is struggling with their mental health. Just giving a general off days for mental health care isn't a good idea considering it will definitely be abused by them.

It will still go down to if the company wants such but it's not their responsibility to keep check of every aspect of their employee's state. Their main responsibility is to know and make the work environment favourable for their efficient work.