Coping with work and life takes toll on health

By KATHERINE HOBY

Many of us head back to work in the New Year with the best intentions. I will work smarter, not harder, we tell ourselves. I will not live to work, I will work to live.

And I will not allow stress to get to me in tough situations.

Despite this, many New Zealand workers, particularly those in executive fields, find themselves run down, ground down and generally down in the dumps with stress levels through the roof before the year is even a few months old.

The social cost of work-related stress is hard to quantify - specific New Zealand figures do not exist. But every day in the United States one million people take the day off work because of stress. And that kind of stress costs the US over US$400 billion ($730 billion) annually.

A psychologist to Auckland's high-flyers, John McEwan, is known as "Dr Stress".

He says that in physical terms stress "is the body's adaptation internally to threat, danger, or demand".

The threshold at which the body decides it cannot cope with stress is different for every person.

Confronted by a threat - physical or emotional, real or imagined - the brain causes the sympathetic nervous system to release adrenaline, noradrenaline, and other related hormones. Flooding the body, they promote the fight-or-flight syndrome - metabolism, heart-rate, blood pressure, breathing-rate, and muscle tension all increase.

Suppress this for too long and the body sends warning signals: minor illnesses and subtle changes in behaviour, Dr McEwan says.

This could range from coughs, colds and flu, snapping at colleagues, and family, losing short-term memory, and perpetually mislaying car keys. Some may feel they are falling out of love with their partner, or start drinking more.

The stress reaction erodes the ability to think strategically. Rational, long-term planning is exchanged for short-term, reactive-decision making.

"When the stress hormones get to a certain point, they start to restrict the thinking. The body goes into survival mode rather than planning mode," Dr McEwan says.

"When you've got someone who's stressed, they are not making good decisions, they are not seeing the big picture."

And physically, they might be getting worse - suffering mood swings, memory failure, sinking self-esteem, lethargy, skin and heart problems, the shakes, and sleep disorders.

Primary Corporate Health director Dr Ian Pogson deals with stressed executives every day.

"Stress is best defined as a perceived lack of resources to cope with certain demands," he says.

The stresses placed on people these days are far greater than on previous generations.

"Most people feel the need to achieve in their career but also feel like they want to be good parents. It is very, very hard to find the right balance," he says.

Growing numbers of executive men in their 40s suffer quite extreme degrees of depression, he says.

Because many people delay having children, men find might find themselves as fathers to toddlers while trying to balance the demands of work.

"In the old days if you were that age and had been in a job for 10 or 20 years you were regarded as the master. Now you would be seen as obsolete. And once you reach your mid-40s there are not a lot of chances to start again."

Dr Pogson suggests stress victims stop looking at what everybody else has, and what they are doing with their lives, and concentrate on getting some perspective on their own life.

Both he and Dr McEwan suggest taking small, practical steps in life such as setting aside some "me time" every week to think, and having small things to look forward to like a regular tennis game.

It is also crucial to stay physically fit and healthy, and to have good relationships with partners, family and friends.

"You need to make constant checks on yourself. Give yourself a monthly audit, as it were."

Stress and fatigue are about to be enshrined in amendments to the law enforcing workplace health and safety. The Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Act, passed just before Christmas, comes into force on May 5.

It will require employers to keep their staff safe from hazardous stress and fatigue, or risk prosecution by the Occupational Safety and Health Service if somebody is harmed.

The inclusion of stress and fatigue as workplace hazards has raised controversy over the past year or so. Business groups said stress would be hard to measure and hard to source.

The union movement, particularly the Finance Sector Union, welcomed the new provisions in the law.

Despite appeals by lawyers and business groups, the act has emerged with no definition of stress.

The select committee considering the bill last year said employers should already be identifying stress and fatigue hazards as part of their workplace hazard management.

Workers will have to provide medical or other evidence of stress before the courts will find an employer liable under the new rules.

Employers fear the changes will spawn a grievance industry like the one that has emerged in Australia.

Herald feature: Health