Your mental health day guide

Everyone agrees that you should stay home when you’re not feeling well. (In fact, your co-workers will probably appreciate it.) But for some reason, being “sick” only counts when you have an injury or the flu.

That’s a harmful misconception, especially because mental health problems can be just dangerous to our health as a virus. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder are the third most common reason people ages 18 to 44 are hospitalized. Mental health illnesses also increase our odds of developing another chronic medical condition and can even shorten our life spans, sometimes by decades.

Still, the stigma of taking a mental health day continues to linger: “I think sometimes we equate it with ‘playing hooky,’” says Amy Morin, LCSW, a lecturer at Northeastern University and the author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do.

It's time to change that mindset and boost mental health awareness. For starters, dealing with anxiety and depression doesn’t make you weak—it makes you normal. According to the Mental Health Foundation, depression is the predominant mental health issue worldwide, and their latest report (from 2014) shows that 19.7% of people in the UK aged 16 and over have symptoms of anxiety or depression. It’s a problem that can interfere with everything, from work performance to parenting abilities.

“I encourage people to think of a mental health day as they think of a visit to a primary care doctor,” says Ken Yeager, PhD, the director of the Stress, Trauma and Resilience (STAR) Program at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “Maintaining your mental health will allow you to be the best you can be.”

Taking a mental health day should help you solve a problem—not add to your guilt and anxiety. “People beat themselves up when they think they didn’t use their day wisely, or the day went by so fast that they didn’t get everything done,” says Morin. But you don’t have to cross a dozen tasks off your to-do list to feel as if you’ve accomplished something, she says.

Instead of packing your schedule with chores, try to tackle some of your biggest stressors—whether that’s sorting through your bills, going to a spa, or grabbing some alone time. “We tend to overestimate how quickly we can finish a project,” says Morin. “Get one or two things done, and then enjoy the rest of the day.”

And don’t worry about feeling guilty about taking time off: “The guilt really sets in when you don’t accomplish what you want to,” says Morin. “Once you feel better, the guilt goes away.”