By Donald A. Davidoff, PhD

There has been much discussion lately about whether its okay to take a day or two off to attend to your mental health. As a psychologist, Im certainly an advocate of doing whatever you need to dowithout shame or hesitationto take care of your mental health.

While the stigma surrounding mental health is certainly a factor in pressuring people to not take enough time off to maintain a healthy life, it is, unfortunately, not the only factor.

In my estimation, the other major factor is that people are working harder than they ever have before. A recent survey found that well more than one half of Americans failed to take all of their allotted vacation days in 2016, and this willingness to voluntarily forego paid vacation has been a recurrent theme for years. Not only that, many people are working well beyond 40 hours per weekprobably even more than they realize.

In my role as an executive coach, I recently spoke with a client who told me during a consultation that he works about 60 hours per week. However, when I spoke to him the following weekafter he shared his working hours estimate with his wifehe said that his wife laughed before explaining to him that he might spend 60 hours per week at the office, but then spends another 25 hours or so working at home.

This anecdote is emblematic of how our work/life balance has gotten skewed, at least in this country. However, there is hope.

The older generationsup through the baby boomershave been drawn into a situation where they put so many hours of their lives into working, that it is often to the detriment of their own personal lives. Meanwhile, what Im seeing with younger generations is that theyre becoming much more concerned with work/life balance.

One of the things that I tell people is that no matter how much you love work, work isnt ever going to love you back. To lead a happy, healthy life, there must be a balance between doing work that you find to be useful, engaging, and satisfying, with an ability to have relationships with people and the community in which you live.