Employee Stress
Costs employers £26bn
Workplace stress is the cause of record numbers of employees calling in sick and quitting their jobs.
A recent report by the charity Mind reveals that nearly 20 per cent of the 2,050 workers surveyed have phoned in sick to avoid work because of unmanageable stress levels. Most of those interviewed admitted ‘pulling a sicky’ and lied about why they felt ill. They admitted they were not coping with long hours, excessive work loads or bullying.
These figures show that hundreds of thousands of UK employees suffer mental distress as a direct result of difficult, stressful working conditions and unsupportive management.
Workplace stress and mental well being.
Paul Farmer, Mind’s chief executive, said: “Mental well-being needs to become a corporate priority as our research suggests there are far more people struggling with work pressures than previously suspected.
“The existing stigma means there is still a huge gap between the number of people off work because of stress and mental health problems and those who feel able to admit this. We want to offer employers support so that mental illness is no longer the elephant in the room, but is regarded like any other condition which can be talked about and managed with the right attitude and policies.
It is estimated that eight million people of working age experience common mental health problems associated with workplace stress, such as depression, anxiety, sleep problems or alcohol dependence. Health and Safety Executive research shows stress and mental illness is responsible for more than half of all working days lost every year.
Employee Stress Management responsibility
The economic costs to employers of employee stress related illness is estimated at around £26bn a year. Symptoms such as poor concentration, low motivation and tiredness lead to less productivity, accounting for two-thirds of this cost, according to the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (SCMH).
The HSE has published statistics on the levels of workplace stress on various occupational groups in the UK.
- In 2008/09 an estimated 415 000 individuals in Britain, who worked in the last year, believed that they were experiencing work-related stress at a level that was making them ill (prevalence), according to the Labour Force Survey
- The 2009 Psychosocial Working Conditions (PWC) survey indicated that around 16.7% of all working individuals thought their job was very or extremely stressful.
- The annual incidence of work-related mental health problems in Britain in 2008, as estimated from the THOR surveillance schemes, was approximately 5,126 new cases per year. However, this almost certainly underestimates the true incidence of these conditions in the British workforce.
- According to self-reports from the LFS an estimated 230 000 people, who worked in the last 12 months, first became aware of work-related stress (incidence), depression or anxiety in 2008/09, giving an annual incidence rate of 760 cases per 100 000 workers.
- Estimates from the LFS indicate that self-reported work-related stress, depression or anxiety accounted for an estimated 11.4 million lost working days in Britain in 2008/09
- LFS survey data suggests the incidence rate of self-reported work-related stress, depression or anxiety has been broadly level over the years 2001/02 to 2008/09, with the exception of 2001/02 where the incidence rate was higher than the current level.
- THOR surveillance data shows a mixed picture with psychiatrist reports of work-related mental health remaining stable between 2000 and 2008 but occupational physician reports showing a clear upward trend over this time period. The ONS omnibus survey shows no overall trend in the proportion of people saying their job was very or extremely stressful between 2004 and 2009.
- THOR surveillance data from General Practitioners indicates that 30.9% of all diagnoses of work-related ill-health are cases of mental ill-health, with an average length of sickness absence per certified case of 26.8 working days.
- Occupation groups containing teachers, nurses, and housing and welfare officers, customer service workers, and certain professional and managerial groups have high prevalence rates of self-reported work-related stress according to the LFS. The LFS also shows people working within public administration and defence to have high prevalence rates of self-reported work-related stress.
- The THOR datasets SOSMI and OPRA also report high incidence rates of work-related mental illness for these occupational groups, along with medical practitioners and those in public sector security based occupations such as police officers, prison officers, and UK armed forces personnel.
Point of care stress test.
MHS has introduced an innovative point of care tests for measuring the effects of free radicals that are often raised in the body due to the effects of stress and a point of care CrP tests that can also measure damage that may result from the increased levels of free radicals.
Free radicals are another name for an unstable oxygen atom.
Simply explained, an atom has a nucleus consisting of protons and neutrons, around which electrons circulate. Most of the time the electrons are paired up, but difficulties occur if an electron is not paired, as happens with unbalanced oxygen atoms. Free radicals grab electrons from normal, or stable body cells and start a sequence known as oxidation.
MDA as a Marker for measuring Stress
Lipid peroxidation is a process that causes cellular injury in many biological systems of plant and animal origin. The process occurs when unsaturated lipids are oxidized to form additional radical species as well as toxic by-products that can be harmful to the host. Polyunsaturated lipids are especially susceptible to this type of damage when in an oxidizing environment and they can react to form lipid peroxides.
Lipid peroxides are unstable, and decompose to form a complex series of compounds including reactive carbonyl compounds. Polyunsaturated fatty acid peroxides further react to form malonaldehyde (MDA).
MDA can be found in most biological samples including foodstuffs, serum, plasma, tissues and urine, as a result of lipid peroxidation, and has become one of the most widely reported analytes for the purpose of estimating oxidative stress effects on lipids.
Method:
The NWLSS™ NWK-MDA01 assay is based on the reaction of malondialdehyde (MDA) with thiobarbituric acid (TBA); forming a MDA-TBA2 adduct that absorbs strongly at 532 nm.
The urinary, point-of-care MDH test is an effective marker for measuring oxygen free radical production. This is a valid method of determining a semi-quantitative approximation of the detrimental lipid oxidation reactions occurring in the body.
Tags: Employee stress, Stress, Stress at work, Stress in the workplace
