What Happens Before Someone Needs Mental Health Leave?
Written by Janice Webber, Owner, Coach, and Artist
Janice Webber is a creative leadership coach and artist who works at the intersection of stress, burnout, and creativity. She helps people restore calm, clarity, and creative flow through embodied, sustainable practices.
Bloomberg recently reported on the increase in workers taking mental health leave and the difficulties employers are experiencing as a result. It's an important conversation, but I think we're starting it too late. We're talking about what happens when someone needs to leave work. I want to talk about what may have been happening for weeks, months, or even years before they got there.
The missing middle
There is a lot of space between “I'm doing fine” and “I can't keep doing this.” Many high-performing people can function in that space for a surprisingly long time.
They keep showing up. They meet their deadlines. They take care of their teams, solve the problems, and keep saying yes. From the outside, everything may look fine, but something has begun to change.
Perhaps their mind won't switch off at night. They wake up tired. Decisions that once came easily require more effort, and their concentration isn't what it used to be. They become less patient, creative thinking becomes harder, and problems feel heavier.
They need more recovery after ordinary days. A weekend helps, but by Monday morning, they're depleted again. Because they're still functioning, those changes can be easy to dismiss.
What if the question isn't “Can you still perform?”
Perhaps we need a different question. Not “Can you still do your job?” but “What is it costing you to continue doing your job at this level?”
That's a very different measure of capacity. Someone can still be highly competent while using more and more of their available resources simply to maintain the same level of performance.
That's why I believe we need to become much better at recognizing changes in capacity before someone reaches a crisis. I experienced this change in capacity myself.
After becoming ill, I eventually returned to work, but I couldn't work the way I had before. I reduced my days and brought someone in to help with some of the workload.
I was still working. I was still doing my job. From that measure alone, I was functioning. But what that measure didn't show was that I needed the rest of the week to recover enough to do it again.
That's one of the changes I think we need to become better at recognizing. Being able to continue doesn't necessarily tell us what continuing is costing us.
Warning signs of declining mental health are information
We've become very good at overriding ourselves. Push through. Get it done. Just make it to Friday. Take a vacation. Try harder. Be more resilient.
But the signals we keep overriding may be telling us something important. Warning signs aren't interruptions. They're information.
Instead of immediately asking how to make ourselves perform better, perhaps we need to ask: What is my system telling me right now? Do I need more recovery? Do I need a pause? Do I need movement, quiet, nature, creative space, a different way of working, or support? Or is something larger going on that needs professional attention?
Recognizing a change doesn't mean someone has failed. It gives them information they can act on.
We don't have to wait until everything stops
Mental health leave will sometimes be necessary. Earlier intervention isn't a guarantee that someone will never need leave, nor should taking leave be viewed as failure.
But we shouldn't have to wait until someone reaches the end of their capacity before we're willing to pay attention. Imagine workplaces where leaders understood the early signs of declining capacity. Imagine individuals who recognized those changes in themselves.
Imagine if taking ten minutes to reset wasn't considered unproductive but part of maintaining the ability to think, solve problems, create, and lead. Perhaps the goal shouldn't simply be helping people recover once they've reached burnout.
Perhaps we also need to become much better at noticing what happens before they get there. Because by the time someone says, “I can't do this anymore,” their system may have been trying to get their attention for a very long time.
Start with your own capacity
If you've noticed that something has changed, you're still functioning and still getting things done, but it seems to be costing you more than it used to, the Creative Reset Map gives you a place to begin.
Together, we look at where your capacity is now, what may be draining it, and the patterns you've been adapting to, pushing through, coping with, or carrying. Because you don't have to wait until everything stops before you start paying attention. Learn more about the Creative Reset Map.
Read more from Janice Webber
Janice Webber, Owner, Coach, and Artist
Janice Webber is a creative leadership coach and artist specializing in stress, burnout, and creative shutdown. Drawing on decades of lived and professional experience, she helps people restore calm, clarity, and creative flow through embodied, sustainable practices. Her work is grounded in the belief that stress is a normal part of being human and that learning how to work with stress is essential.
References:
Stress Is Not the Problem, Staying in Stress Is by Janice Webber.
Why Creativity Disappears Under Stress, And What Leaders Are Missing by Janice Webber.
Leadership Under Pressure and How to Avoid the Leadership Survival Trap by Prudence Hatchett.
Image: Summer Storm, original watercolour by Janice Webber.
About the image: Summer Storm, an original watercolour by Janice Webber. I painted this as a storm was beginning to die down, while the waves were still crashing amongst the rocks. It reminds me that even when the worst of the storm has passed, its effects don't disappear immediately. Being able to keep going doesn't necessarily tell us what the pressure has cost us.
