Once upon a time, businessmen were shoulder-to-the-wheel kind of guys, toughing it out every day to earn an honest buck. If the stress of the job started to escalate, or the normal daily pressure of making the grade began to get to them, they for sure tried to hide it. They sucked it up and just did what it took, for the most part; after all, a job is sometimes just a job, not the pinnacle of life. Besides, what would have been the point of complaining about it all? Regardless of the tedium, there still had to be food on the table, clothes on the kids, whatever.
Now, there is no shame in cracking up on the job. Can't take it any more? Too many demands, too little possibility of meeting expectations? For this era's business droid, there is the Holy Grail of the benefits package: the Mental LOA. With the Mental LOA, you get a paid break from the daily grind without really stepping all the way off the corporate ladder: a few weeks to 'restore' yourself, maybe even a month or two to really rejuvenate, and you're back on your career path. Even better, there's always some ambiguity about WHY you're out on LOA: could be a family meltdown, maybe some alcohol abuse, who knows? When you finally return from LOA, you ease back into your familiar chores but with much less expectation of completing actual work. Easy street. After all, if you try to do too much too soon---BOOM! Back on LOA for another round of R&R.
Unfortunately for me, you need one key component to pull a Mental LOA: the 'friendly' family physician, who will gladly write a note explaining your probably-temporary and certainly-curable (with rest, of course) condition. And such a friendly physician I do not have tucked nicely away. Such doctors prescribe antibiotics and Xanax over the phone without missing a beat, as long as you are a patient of note who---ironically---is able to 'handle' such drugs without incident. To sum it up, you need to be a NORMAL patient to have a doctor who will recommend the elusive Mental LOA.
I asked an HR Professional in my world, "Hey, what do I have to do around here to get some Mental LOA?" After all, I am constantly being told that I am unstable, volatile in fact. "Line up behind every other fool around here," she told me. "If you're smart enough to angle for the Mental LOA, you don't need one."