I never do now, but at a former job I would maybe every few months. It was a depressing job where it didn’t matter much if I went in or not.
Now it’s not like I’m indispensable, but we get enough time off that I can make it to the next planned break or day off without a problem.
I’m embarrassed to say that I did take two work from home days this winter when big storms hit; I was gunshy from getting stuck in the driveway and preferred to just hunker down. I’m not a true New Englander I guess.
Every day. I just don’t tell them about it. 
Normally, I say very seldom. I guess it’s still seldom, but the difference is in the last few years I’ve been more up front about it:
“Hello, it’s Broomstick. My dad died this morning so I will not be in to work because I simply can’t do the happy-chirpy retail thing today”
Which may or may not qualify as “mental health” in your book, but given the fact my family has suffered a large number of deaths in the past few years I am, of course, down about it from time to time. My place of work has been very understanding about it. Of course, I’ve also been careful to keep my bosses in the loop so they know what’s going on with me.
I’m taking this week off work because it covers the anniversary of my spouse’s death last year and, again, I can’t do the happy-chirpy retail thing - but it wasn’t spur of the moment, when I realize I was having struggles in early March I requested the time off. I was also up front with why I was requesting the time off even though I didn’t have to be.
Most of my vacation time is spent covering my daughter’s days off from school (spring break, random in service days, etc.) that I just don’t have much left over to use on myself. Trust me, I need a mental health day, but I have to save mine for the occasional family long weekend vacation or covering for school breaks.
Man, I can’t wait until she’s old enough to be home on her own…
If I’m sick, I call in sick. Have never called in sick for mental/emotional reasons. Did take a couple of days off after my parents died. Think I just took annual leave rather than sick.
If I just don’t feel like working, I take annual leave.
The term “mental health day” strikes me as pretty much bullshit unless you are just using it to convey, “didn’t feel like working today.”
When I find myself needing mental days, I change jobs. Advantages of being in the contract circuit.
Assuming “mental health day” means a snap decision to take a day off just because, I do it about once or twice per year.
My job consists of “write software to do X and finish it by November” etc. My deadlines are many months out, so I work to my own personal schedule. My company defines all time off as PTO, so there’s no need to justify it. As long as I’m confident of being on track, I can go fishing if I feel the urge.
That’s pretty much what I was going to say (except for the children part since I don’t have any). There’s so much work involved in getting ready for a sub that it would just add to the stress.
Thankfully, so far this year I haven’t been sick and I haven’t felt the need to get away from things. However, Good Friday was our last school holiday; we get no days off until school’s out at Memorial Day. Testing will take up much of the next two months, so the stress will be much higher.
Right now, I’m a substitute teacher, and so I can take days off no-muss, no-fuss, whenever I feel like it. I just don’t get paid for those days. I still do it less than once a year, because I need the money.
Once I get a full time job, my answer will be like LHoD’s and CelticKnot’s. Plus, not all subs are any good, and there’s no guarantee of who you’re going to get, so a day off will probably mean that you’ve got to catch your classes up on things the sub didn’t do with them.
For a very long time in my IT career, I traditionally took one day per month as a mental health / vacation day.
Never scheduled in advance. I just picked a day when I had nothing due and no meetings and called in sick.
Back in circa 1990-ish, one of my managers called me into her office to complain about this, accusing me of abusing my sick time (note: PTO, not sick time). I explained what I did and why. Then I explained that I was the only one in the company who did my job, I had no backup, no one trained to take over if I went on vacation. So if she wanted me to, I would stop taking the one day per month and immediately schedule a 2-week vacation over the summer and let her figure out who I could train as backup.
Suddenly my monthly day off had management approval.
There was only one day that I ever actively went after to call in sick on, regardless of what was happening. Although I only ended up taking it off about half the time.
That day was the first day of spring to hit 70 degrees.
Maybe 1-2 times a year. Also, I manage people and I tell them that mental health days are a valid use of sick time, IMO - I don’t need to know why they’re out sick, all I need is an email that says “Jimbob out - sick leave”. For me, they come when I’ve been dealing with the serious “I don’t wanna’s” for a while - generally at about 2 weeks of that, I start looking at my calendar to see if there’s a day coming up that I don’t have lot on it.
I do ask them for a couple of things to consider:
don’t use all their sick time this way. The last thing I’d want is for someone to have a serious physical ailment and not have any sick time available because they used it for mental health days. Work to build a cushion if possible.
Do their best not to inconvenience their coworkers in terms of needing a lot of coverage for things on the day they’re out.
If someone was taking a day a week of sick time, we’d need to have a conversation about whether there’s FMLA documentation that should be happening, but so far, I’ve not had anyone take advantage of my stance on mental health days. It also helps that we’re all salaried employees in the department I manage.
Not sure.
Once upon a time, a ruthless top management type closed down my location and threatened to mess up the careers of all the people working there. I was so disgusted with the company for a while that on more than one day, while I was driving to work (at one of the other locations), I just didn’t make one of the turns, and drove around or otherwise wasted time all day. But I didn’t call in sick, I just wandered around, wondering if I really still worked for that company, or just trying not to think about it. I didn’t say a word to anybody about it. And people didn’t know what location I was working at anyway, so I don’t think anybody actually noticed that I was absent.
But if those don’t count, then, no.