Long Term Disability -Time off work

LegacyUser

Hey all,
Try to make this quick, suffer for 10 years from Panic attacks anxiety depression which is basically brought on from a fear of been trapped. Socially, physically and emotionally. Needs to say this has taken over my life.

Being seeing a Psychologist for a year now which has made some improvements but only in the past couple of weeks I have recently realized how depressed I am and how hard I've made ot on myself by just "getting on with it".

My girlfriend recently suggested that I could take a paid break from work which would me the world to me. ButIjust want to ask how it works.

My company has this in their rule book
After 4 weeks continuous absence (6 weeks for employee with 5+ year's of service)

Where an employee who has passed probation, is absent through sickness for more than 4 continuous weeks, the employee will be asked to meet with the Occupational Health Department. If the Occupational Health Department confirms that the employee is unfit for work, the employee will, at the Company’s discretion, be paid 60% of their salary less Social Protection Illness Benefit.

After 4 months absence
After 4 months of long term sickness, the employee will, at the Company’s discretion, be paid 40% of their salary less Social Welfare Benefit for a further 2 months. At the 4-month absence stage, the HR Dept will commence the paperwork for the Long Term Disability Insurance Scheme.

I honestly dont know where to begin to ask for this or what I need to bring to my employers to get this done?

Any advice on this would be great.

Zaph

The first thing you'll need to do is talk to your GP. If you're off on sick leave for more than 3 days you need to get a social welfare cert from him. If you think that an extended break is what you need, then you need to be sure that your GP will actually provide you with certs every week. If he agrees that it would be beneficial to your health for you to be off for an extended period of time, your next step would be to talk to your HR department, explaining the situation to them. Companies are generally more sympathetic towards mental health issues these days than they would have been in the past, but you can't take it for granted that your employers will see this as reasonable grounds for an extended period of sick leave and will continue to pay you. You'd also need to be able to tell them how long you think you might need. I know that that's probably hard to say, but even in broad terms, say 6 months as opposed to 2 months. If you can confirm to them that you intend to do a course of counselling or something similar during the period you want to be off they'll probably view your request more favourably.

It's all a bit on an inexact science tbh, it really depends on the company themselves and how sympathetic the HR people are to situations such as yours. Best of luck, I hope you manage to get the time off you need and that it helps you get things back on track.