Reducing Work Stress May Lower The Risk Of New Mental Illness Cases

If your workplace is supporting its employees by reducing their job strain, it may boost in preventing new cases of common mental illness from occurring up to 14 per cent, a new study suggests. The findings, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, confirm that high job strain is associated with an increased risk of developing common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety amongst middle-aged workers.Job strain is a term used to describe the combination of high work pace, intensity, and conflicting demands, coupled with low control or decision-making capacity.

"The results indicate that if we were able to eliminate job strain situations in the workplace, up to 14 per cent of cases of common mental illness could be avoided," said lead author Samuel Harvey, Associate Professor at the Black Dog Institute in Australia.

"These findings serve as a wake-up call for the role workplace initiatives should play in our efforts to curb the rising costs of mental disorders," Harvey added.

To determine levels of job strain, 6,870 participants completed questionnaires at age 45 testing for factors including decision authority, skill discretion and questions about job pace, intensity and conflicting demands.

The researchers also accounted for non-workplace factors including divorce, financial problems, housing instability, and other stressful life events like death or illness.

The models developed in this study controlled for individual workers' temperament and personality, their IQ, level of education, prior mental health problems and a range of other factors from across their early lives.

The final modelling suggested that those experiencing higher job demands, lower job control and higher job strain were at greater odds of developing mental illness by age 50, regardless of sex or occupational class.

"Workplaces can adopt a range of measures to reduce job strain, and finding ways to increase workers' perceived control of their work is often a good practical first step. This can be achieved through initiatives that involve workers in as many decisions as possible," Harvey, who is also affiliated with the University of New South Wales in Australia, noted.

These are by far the best tips to reduce excessive straining at workplace:

1. Take note of what distresses you the most.

2. Each time any such situation arises, go out for a walk or get a snack for yourself.

3. Try to give a healthy response to every situation at workplace. Learn how to act and not react.

4. Learn how to relax yourself; try deep breathing.

5. Take some time off when you feel that it is becoming too hectic. During this period, you need to spend some time away from work and avoid thinking about it too.

6. Establish some boundaries; for example, avoid taking emails after you have office. Until and unless it is something too urgent, you must know how to keep your work and personal life as two different entities.