How to talk to your boss about mental health: With up to 80% of people estimated to experience some form of mental health condition over their lifetime it is likely that it’ll coincide with, and ultimately impact your work in some way. Regardless of the severity of your experience, chances are you won’t be performing at your all time best when in the throes of a mental health challenge. It’s important to have those conversations early on with your employer to see how accommodations can be made to avoid things getting out of hand.

Take the time to reflect: Before jumping into these often tricky conversations, take the time to really understand the ins and outs of what you’re going through, writes Kelly Greenwood, the founder and CEO of mental health non-profit Mind Share Partners for the Harvard Business Review. This might mean considering things like how long you expect the impact on your performance to be, or what might have led to this particular challenge. It's especially important to take note of whether work-related issues were a factor in your current condition, so that you can better work with your manager on addressing the root causes of stressors.

Assess your work environment: Once you’ve checked in with yourself, make sure you get a good reading of your company culture. This means assessing the resources, if any, already available to you at your organization. Looking at how higher ups in your company embody mentally healthy behaviors is also a good way to gauge how you might approach talking to your manager about your own challenges, Greenwood says.

Think up some possible solutions ahead of time: Preparing suggestions for how your organization could accommodate for your situation ahead of time could be a good place to start. Whether you’re asking for more flexible work hours or a few days off to recharge, it's good to have specific requests on hand to make matters easier for your manager.

The key here is to be as proactive as possible: Instead of waiting until a challenge balloons into a crisis, try to anticipate your breaking point ahead of time. “Mental health days are truly meant to prevent burnout,” a US-based psychiatrist tells Lifehacker. This is admittedly more difficult than it seems, because no one wants to appear incapable of managing stress in a competitive job market, but it is still better than collapsing and risking your job altogether.

But be prepared for a back and forth: “It is key to frame the conversation in a way that gives your boss a chance to provide you with feedback on what are some things that are working and some things that aren’t working,” a clinical psychologist tells Lifehacker.

So how much information should you divulge? The consensus among mental health and HR professionals is that you should keep detail to just enough so that managers understand you are genuinely going through a difficult time, but to avoid the specifics of stressors from your personal life.

Bosses need to start recognizing the importance of their workers’ mental health: Being forthcoming about mental health challenges is important, but the onus should not lie solely on employees to come forward; managers need to create a welcoming environment too. Holding regular check-ins with employees, offering flexibility and communicating frequently are among the tools managers can employ to help their team feel comfortable talking about their personal challenges.