As EU economies show signs of recovery, attention is now being shifted to the price paid by millions of workers in the past decade as they struggled with uncertainty about their future. There is no doubt that the average workplace no longer offers the job security of two or three decades ago.
Young people joining the jobs market struggle to find their identity in society as good jobs become scarcer and planning an independent family is that much more difficult. Recent World Health Organisation statistics claim that depression is now the leading cause of ill health and disability in the world. The condition has overtaken lower respiratory disease as the biggest global health problem, with anxiety and depression increasing by 18 per cent between 2006 and 2015.
WHO director-general Margaret Chan says: “These new statistics are a wake-up call for all countries to rethink their approaches to mental health and to treat it with the urgency it deserves.” Many mental health professionals insist that lack of understanding of the condition and prejudice towards those who suffer from it remain barriers to effective treatment.
Cash-strapped governments under pressure to improve fiscal statistics often adopt the wrong strategies to combat this increasingly worrying health threat.
They resort to sanctioning those workers reporting sick because of a mental health problem by cutting their social benefits. The objective of the ‘back to work’ strategy is purely economic and it is certainly needed to wean off abusers from dependence on social benefits. But for those who are genuinely suffering from a mental health condition it simply adds to their problems.
Jobs can be more damaging to mental health than unemployment
The UK’s leading bodies representing psychologists, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and counsellors recently wrote an open letter published in The Independent advising government on the risks of sanctioning those workers who suffer from mental health problems. They rightly claimed that unhappiness at work can be a major cause of depression and that “jobs can be more damaging to mental health than unemployment”.
Bullying, incompetent management, inadequate training and corporate financial problems are just some of the hazards that some workers face on a daily basis. Many are badly paid for performing low-skilled jobs because they lack the skills that would qualify them for better rewarding occupations. This often leads to depression with many ruling themselves out of the jobs market and resorting to substance abuse.
WHO claims irrefutable links between depression and other mental and physical health problems: “Depression increases the risk of substance use disorders and diseases such as diabetes and heart diseases; the opposite is also true, meaning that people with these other conditions have a higher risk of depression.”
Some employers persist in increasing insecurity in the workplace. Lloyds Bank, for instance, intends to reduce the staff in its UK branches to just two or three people who interact with clients by using tablet computers. They brazenly claim this is what clients want.
Others exploit low-skilled workers by giving them zero hours contracts with precarious work conditions. It is no wonder the black economy thrives where governments only pay lip service to social equity.
While it is encouraging to read that the suicide rate in Malta is decreasing, we must not fool ourselves that mental health problems are becoming less important. Employers need to train their management to identify those workers who show the first signs of mental health problems including depression and anxiety. Then they need to offer support to these vulnerable workers until they are fit again to function normally.
Employers also need to work with mental health voluntary organisations to overcome the prejudice that society still nurtures for those who need psychiatric help. These organisations can often achieve much more than the public health system that has to deal with a multitude of health issues in the community.
Creating mental health awareness in the workplace is essential if we are to promote fair treatment for those who are suffering from depression and anxiety. As the communications consultant and politician Alistair Campbell said: “One day, we will look back and wonder how on earth we used to believe that depression was a lifestyle choice, only to be debated and taken seriously when an A-List film star took his life, and the world filled with people saying how shocked and saddened they were.”
We should start a health reform by reviewing the way we handle child and adolescent mental health services in our schools.
johncassarwhite@yahoo.com