Employee having mental health related issues

· noise r/smallbusiness · ↑ 81 · 💬 116 · 2026-03-28 · kw: better way to · open on reddit ↗

Tool

none

Issue

Small business owner lacks structured framework for managing employee mental health crises, resulting in 3-day no-show with no communication, requiring ad-hoc intervention and uncertainty about balancing employee wellbeing against operational continuity.

Cost

unstated

Recommendation

none

Date context

2026-03-28

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

Update!: I had a good conversation with the employee, along with a relative of hers that I am close with to help come up with a better idea of what’s going on. She’s working half days now, and taking one day off each week for the next few weeks while she gets established on treatments with her doctors. Thanks all for the advice! I’ve have an employee, a young lady, working with us for about 10 months now. She’s been fantastic at what she does. About two months ago, she started showing up late, getting progressively worse, to the point of not showing up at all and then saying she was sick. We are \*extremely\* flexible, and have let her work from home when she’s been sick, but in this same time period she would also “work from home” while not responding to any emails, calls or texts. She received a warning, and we saw improvement over the last couple weeks, until this week. She no showed for three days, with no contact or response to anyone reaching out. Turns out, she had a mental breakdown after her goldfish passed away, and ended up in the hospital for a night. I managed to contact her on day four after reaching out to a relative who told her to call me. She wants to stay, but says she doesn’t know if she can handle the stress of life, alongside the stress of a job. I feel really burned by this whole thing, and the fact that she hasn’t communicated anything. I feel like she does great work and has a good attitude, but the only way I see things going forward is zero flexibility and no more working from home, which probably won’t help her mental state either. I also fear firing her will cause her to spiral further. How to I approach this?

Top comments (8)

[score=1] AutoModerator

**Friendly Reminder** r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. Ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. **Please do not conduct market research on our community.** We are not your focus group and asking us about our pain points, needs, what is hardest about X, etc. is not asking about how small business works or for real help with running your small business. These posts are subject to removal and given the community's disgust with the constant spamming of these posts you might just destroy your brand and contaminate your company search results. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. If you asked about pain points or are directly or indirectly promoting a product please remove your post. Come back to post an honest question or give a knowledgeable response to someone else's question and leave your company name in your own profile. We can tell if you know what you're doing and the community can reach out if they need to. **We welcome honest question posts, especially from newcomers.** Thank you for your post. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*

[score=200] Adventurous-Depth984

If she checked herself in for a psych eval, they hold her for 72 hours. She didn’t go no contact because her fish died. She went to the hospital and they took her phone and everything else on her person for 3 days. That said, you might need to transition someone into her position while she sorts things out, if she can sort things out

[score=124] Glum_Improvement7283

Seems like a leave for health reasons is appropriate. She was a good employee. Something is going on. Chat with her and contrast her behavior now vs. then. Ask what she needs. Figure out how to help.

[score=33] Miqotegirl

If it was me, I would have a consultation with an employment lawyer. She has a documented health issue where she had a hospital stay. Mental health issues can be a disability.

[score=36] Particular-Ruin-2062

I went through a bout like this for 6 months. I was strong enough to push through but not without a lot of tears, and depression. My work suffered but not to the point like this employee. Mental health is real, gold fish wasn’t the reason but just one more thing to add on to an already spiraling mess of issues for her. Meet with her, talk to her, support her and setup a plan w her. It may be the difference between life and death. Within your plan w her, setup checkpoints with outcomes and give her a way out without you just having to fire her.

[score=8] notmyfaultooops

Day 3 I filed a police report and welfare check… employee discovered passed out on the stairs… a day in the psych ward and didn’t get any better after that

[score=7] TheMissingCurricNE

Give her all of the support you can and create an environment where she can be brilliant at her job and have a less stress. Look at less hours, more office or less office, just understand the right environment for her and both the employee and yourself will benefit in the long run.

[score=11] MarcusXL

She needs to take a leave of absence. You can hold a position for her, if that's what she really wants, but you need to be clear (to her and everyone else) that she needs to live up to the same standards as everyone else. You cannot pay her for doing nothing and she cannot be no-call no-showing. 3 days of no-show is usually a termination, with few exceptions. Tons of other red flags here. She needs help you cannot provide.