Beneath the skin: from occupational stress to mental illness

A reported 1 billion people worldwide have struggled with their mental health, a condition that carries an undue stigma—and is likely underreported. Work demands are a salient cause. Odessa Hamilton writes that reducing daily burdens is critical to the health of the workforce (employers and employees). Mental health, she says, needs to become a regular discussion that can be shared without judgement or penalty, because no person is immune to it. 

 
Non-existent work-life balance. Difficult boss. Dysfunctional team. Impossible workload. Transit traumas. Toxic company culture. Dangerous conditions. Precarious schedules. Strenuous tasks. Underemployed. Undervalued. Underpaid. All have experienced one or more of these workplace stressors to varying degrees, but what exactly is occupational stress, what does it cost us and how does it affect our biology?

We discuss here what occurs beneath the skin and why reducing these daily burdens is critical to the health of the workforce (employer and employee alike!). It is accepted that the discernment, management and mitigation of psychosocial risks at work require an interdisciplinary approach (Giorgi et al., 2018). Therefore, in what follows, we synopsise a survey of evidence to orient readers on the crosstalk between occupational stress, immunity and mental illness.

 
Mental fragility

Mental health is a fragile thing. Anyone can lose it. Mental ill-health is prevalent among all regions of the world, without bounds nor regard to population or individual sociodemographics (Saxena et al., 2013). More than 1 billion people (16% of the population) are reported to have suffered mental illness (including addictive disorders) worldwide; accounting for 7% of all global burden of disease (Rehm & Shield, 2019). However, true incidence of mental illness remains unknown; underreporting is highly probable given its undue association with shame. Irrespective of its ubiquity, mental illness continues to be taboo, and it is this stigmatisation that reduces transparency and health-seeking behaviour (Bharadwaj et al., 2017).

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Πηγή: blogs.lse.ac.uk