I will be honest with you, when I first heard the idea of dedicated mental health days as a work benefit, my first thought was yes, absolutely, long overdue, and my second thought, almost immediately after, was ..... have you met Nigerians?
Because both things can be true at the same time, truth is that we can genuinely need something and also genuinely do misuse it, and pretending otherwise would be a very sweet, very useless essay.
Okay so , let's start with the part that actually matters, this country is not an easy one, I don't mean that in a bad way, persay, I mean it in the very practical possible everyday sense of the word, you see the traffic alone can undo a person, the present economy is sitting on everyone's chest, a lot of people are carrying things like family pressure, financial stress, grief they never properly processed, anxiety that has become so normal they have stopped recognising it as anxiety, and many of us grew up in homes where mental health was not even a phrase that existed, where you were expected to pray it off or sleep it off or just keep moving because life does not stop, so yes, the idea that a worker could legally, officially take a day to actually attend to what is happening inside their head without using up sick leave meant for physical illness, without lying, without guilt that is something a lot of people in this country would genuinely benefit from.
Mental health is health, that conversation has been slow coming in Nigeria but it is coming, and normalising it at the workplace level, making it structural rather than optional, would do something real for how we treat ourselves and each other at work.
But then....
You and I both know what will also happen, the same week mental health days get announced, half the office will suddenly need one, not because they have finally found language for something they havee been suffering through but because that beach trip has been planned since January and the annual leave days are finished, I am not judging anyone, I'm just being truthful, if something can be gamed, it will be gamed, and a benefit with no structure around it is practically an invitation.
So the solution is not to scrap the idea, the solution is to build it properly from the start.
Make it require a doctor's report. Not just any note scribbled in five minutes, but an actual consultation, a mental health professional, a licensed therapist, a clinical psychologist someone who can confirm that this day is being used for what it is meant for, and go further than just the report,make the benefit tied to something productive a therapy session receipt, a documented wellness activity, something that shows the day was genuinely used for care and not convenience, it sounds like a lot but it is really just the same accountability we already apply to sick leave, you don't get sick leave without showing you were actually sick, mental health days should work the same way.
The people who truly need it will not find that process burdensome, they will be relieved there's a proper channel at all, the people trying to game the system will find it more effort than it is worth and book their annual leave instead.
Mental health days in Nigerian workplaces is not a foreign concept being imported for people who have too much free time, it is a practical response to a very real weight that a lot of people are carrying quietly every single day, we just have to build it in a way that respects that weight instead of turning it into another thing people joke about on a Monday morning.
Image is Generated With Chatgpt
