You can be signed off for anything from 7 days upwards
Well I sort of guessed that it wasn't a six months minimum.
if the illness is anxiety related, then being re-assessed every 2 weeks isn't going to help as much as knowing you're off the hook work wise to just concentrate on getting well for a few months - that's gonna help people get well isn't it? instead of yo-yoing in and out and in and out of work! and easier for the employer to plan for too?
But surely there is a middle ground between two weeks and six months? Stress, anxiety and depression are not all that easy to predict in terms of response to treatment, side effects etc. None of the fleet of docs who cared for MIL were ever able or willing to predict how long we were going to have to wait things out even with an extensive medical history of similar episodes as an aid. Perhaps British docs are just better at working out how long things will take ?
But....if a person DOES respond quite well to treatment in a shorter timeframe than predicted and could go back to work earlier than originally stated by the doc, surely there is the risk that people will still take the entire timeframe set out for them even if not required in reality. I cannot be the only person in the universe with a bit of a skivvy gene. If you gave me six months I wouldn't be telling you I was better in three or four even if I was. I would most likely be exaggerating any residual symtoms to myself (for the sake of not feeling guilty), which probably would hamper my progress in getting fully better. (NB I also have a bit of a drama queen gene, so could think myself ill enough not to go back to work quite easily).
Doctors don't make this stuff up
Err, well, actually they do sometimes. But I can believe that in the UK it isn't the issue it can be in other places. I went to the doc (in England) with a rampant chest infection needing a sick note in 1988 and the bastard wouldn't give me one even though I looked like something the cat had just dragged up from hell, via a bush. The unfeeling stiff upper lip obsessed git. All I bleeding wanted was a few extra days off. Whereas here in Italy (before The Clamp Down) I just coughed gently in the quack's direction while hankering after antibiotics for my upset tonsils, and bam, 2 weeks off without me even asking for it. Had to go to work anyway becuase have a bastard unfeeling boss (self).
Work and being paid for it involves a willingness to be available for it. 6 month sign offa for stress/depression are extremEly unusual and even cancer patients are usually only signed off for more than three months at a time in exceptional circs. Sounds odd to me and I would be following it uup with a consultation meeting as the HOUR mgr here and I doubt our ohP would recommend a trip on full pay to Aus without a great deal of info.
Ok that makes more sense to me as the normal scheme of things than six months sign off without review and no expectation of being avalible, or even in the country.
Reading this thread I think living in Italy has left me deeply cynical. The piss takers were so numerous and the abuse so widespread and well documented that keeping an open mind was like cutting your head open and letting your brain flop on the floor. I am now going to boast to DH about the UKs sick pay system and how national character and "proper" doctors eliminate the risk of abuse.
I feel sorry for the people who are actually sick in Italy, at this point you would have to actually half bleed to death in front of your colleques/friends/aquantences to be believed that you are not making it up if you got signed off work. And they are trapped in the house for most of the day in case the random check up happens. It has curtailed the massive army of pisstakers, but not made things easy at all for the genuinely ill.