Canada

As someone who's been put through the wringer by a job before a lot of what this employee is saying is familiar to me. There's a couple details of the story I'd like to focus on, though.

His doctor diagnosed severe burnout and prescribed time off work and psychotherapy.

But when he applied for short-term disability to take that break, Manulife — which provides insurance benefits for RBC — rejected the claim.

Why is this even a thing? The guy got his prescription, who is a private company to tell the guy his doctor's prescription is wrong?

Manulife initially rejected the employee's request for short-term disability because because the company doesn't recognize it as a condition that's covered.

When he returned to his doctor for further medical testing, he was also diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive episode — not uncommon, according to Alani-Verjee.

"Burnout kind of becomes an umbrella term for those major depressive symptoms and those anxiety symptoms," she said.

Armed with that diagnosis, the employee tried again to get short-term disability coverage. But again, Manulife declined.

In a letter to him, which Go Public translated from French, the insurance giant outlined its reasons.

Among other things, Manulife said his condition was not severe because he was not prescribed medication, only therapy — an argument which frustrates Alani-Verjee, who says using psychotherapy as a first line of treatment is common and recommended.

This is why we must fight against the privatization of our healthcare. Financial arguments aside, is this really the future anyone wants? Where the treatment prescribed by our doctor is unavailable to us because a private entity who's primary motivation is profit will do whatever they can to weasel out of having to provide that treatment?

The financial planner says when he told his manager that his mental health was suffering and he needed time off, she didn't listen.

Instead, he says, she encouraged him to get back on track, saying she had confidence he could do the job.

"She would tell me she cared, but I wouldn't see any real concrete action from her part," he said. "They talk about mental health, but I've seen no help whatsoever."

Back to the topic of the article, this is about what you can expect to hear if you do get into a burnout situation. For all that mental health gets talked about in this day and age, the reality is, your health is only of interest to the extent that you're able to be at work and do the job. In terms of your long term health, most bosses aren't going to care about that. Whatever it takes to get you back on the floor so they can squeeze those last drops of juice from you.