The Changing Relationship Between Work and Mental Health
It's changing (whether people like it or not)
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week 2024 in the UK. However, while being aware of mental health matters in the abstract is always a good thing, awareness of the current state of mental health matters paints a far less rosy picture.
Post-pandemic, mental health problems are increasing (particularly in young people), while funding for already threadbare resources is being cut further. In response to this dire situation, our government is proposing to deny sickness benefits to those with depression and anxiety access to sickness benefits. Because that won’t make the problem significantly worse.
The main aim of this policy is, supposedly, to get those enduring mental health issues back to work. The PM himself said:
“People with less severe mental health conditions should be expected to engage with the world of work”.
This statement raises a very salient, topical issue: the relationship between mental health, and work/employment. Because it’s a relationship that’s changing rapidly, to the point where it’s causing issues, which many aren’t happy about.
The complex link between stress, work, and mental health.
Stress is a major factor in mental health problems. Specifically, chronic stress. The sort of low-level, background stress that, while not immediately traumatising, hangs around, and builds up over time, which is an Achilles heel of the modern human brain.
And work is a reliable source of such stress. We need to work to earn money, to survive. But in a time of a cost-of-living crisis, stagnant wages, pseudo-recession and economic uncertainty, and more, the link between “work” and “survival” has never been less certain. And that’s stressful. Ergo, bad for mental health.
Employers, similarly affected by the wider context, will logically try to get more work, more output, for less money. This shifts employee’s work-life balance heavily towards the former, which is bad for mental health.
Add to that, many other reliable sources of stress (loss of autonomy, toxic environments, emotional suppression, wasted effort for poor rewards etc.) that are reliably found in the typical workplace, and it’s no wonder that one in five UK workers are currently suffering from burnout, something which has major ramifications for mental health.
Some may argue that these are unfortunate, but inevitable, results of the wider context in which work and mental health currently operate. And there’ll be some truth to that. However, modern workplace practices often make employee mental health needlessly worse.
A real piece of work: mental health clashes with workplace practices.
Many employers ‘talk the talk’ about employee mental health, but ‘walking the walk’ proves more elusive. Enthusiastically trumpeted workplace mental health policies often amount to little more than some generic pamphlet on wellbeing, or occasional yoga or mindfulness workshops during the lunch hour.
Even the more substantial efforts can end up being misused. The NHS provides resilience training for its regularly-overwhelmed workforce, to help them handle the stresses and demands of the job. But as many burnout-afflicted medics will attest, this ‘resilience’ is treated like a blank cheque for increasing employee workloads. After all, they’re resilient now, so they can take more on, right?
Presumably, the recorded rise in ‘unexplained’ absences and sickness at work is related to this issue.
Sure, all employees ideally would honestly report honestly when they’re mental health issues prevent them from working. Unfortunately, many workplace setups make this tricky.
Most sick leave systems require evidence, and specifics. Doctors notes, official diagnoses, likely recovery time, how many days of allotted leave will be used, and so on. Such things can be fairly straightforward for physical ailments, but much trickier for mental health conditions, where things like a definitive diagnosis, or recovery time, are much harder to establish, if not impossible (e.g. a serious depressive episode can occur whenever, and last an undetermined length of time).
Even the employee does jump through the bureaucratic hoops required for sick leave for a mental health condition, doing so is another source of stress and uncertainty. The very act of requesting a specific amount of time off for a mental health issue can mean you actually end up needing more, leading to a very unhelpful feedback loop.
And even if an employee goes completely “by the (needlessly stressful) book” and is granted sick leave, their jobs can still be at risk. Because the sad fact is, many employers still struggle with recognising mental health issues as ‘proper’ illnesses.
Our own dear PM was recently railing against “sick note culture”, therefore amplifying the (bleakly common) view that any employee calling in sick for anything less serious than having both their legs torn off by bears, or being actively on fire, is automatically lazy, work shy.
Is it any wonder that those enduring perfectly valid mental health issues opt to leave their sickness ‘unexplained’? It’s often better than the alternative.
Thankfully, such attitudes to work and mental health are increasingly old fashioned, and being called into question.
However, this itself has led to other concerns.
The generation gap: differing attitudes to mental health at work between younger and older employees.
Much attention is currently focused on the attitudes and expectations of younger people when it comes to employment, the workplace, and mental health. Put simply, modern young people view work very differently to older generations. And this, predictably, is causing conflict.
With all the grim inevitability of a Jimmy Carr TV appearance, many pundits and ‘old school’ types pin the blame for this squarely on younger people. They’re pampered and entitled, you see. They have unrealistic expectations. They’re just following the latest social media trends for having depression and anxiety. And so on.
One can’t help but wonder how many of those bemoaning the influence of social media on employees have their alarmingly pro-work attitudes informed and reinforced by LinkedIn (which apparently doesn’t count as social media, for some reason.) Or perplexingly combine their condemnation of smartphones with expectations that workers be present or ‘on call’ 24/7, usually only possible thanks to the glowing rectangle in their pocket.
Logically, these differing attitudes towards work, and mental health in particular, will result in a drastic shift in the workplace eventually. Because the younger generation will become the older generation who run things, and likely bring their attitudes with them.
Indeed, many already recognise that workplace approaches need updating, to reflect modern views and sensibilities (and thereby attract and retain younger employees).
This is particularly important when it comes to mental health, as studies show workers in their 20s are more prone to health problems, particularly mental health problems, than those in their 40s. The economic impact of this alone is substantial.
Again, the harrumphing pundits would cite this as further proof that the younger workers are weak, spoiled, and fragile, compared to their older counterparts.
But then, older employees are more likely to be in senior positions, i.e. better paid, with greater autonomy and job security. They’re also more likely to be on the property ladder. These factors can help offset the stress of working considerably. But they’re invariably inaccessible to younger employees.
Conversely, lest this becomes a binary ‘Young vs Old’ issue, older employees often have more responsibilities and dependents (a spouse, children, mortgage etc.). Combine this with having far less access to mental health information and insight during their formative years, and more exposure to negative stigmas, older employees may well want to take time off for mental health issues, but feel less able to, so opt to “power through” (and maybe self-medicate with alcohol and the like), which only makes things worse.
Workable solutions?
Blaming smartphones and modern youthful attitudes for the issues of mental health in the modern workplace may be the easier option (and one that generates clicks). But it’s a lazy cop-out. Such things may have someimpact, sure, but the reality is far more complex.
In truth, many of the expectations, conventions, and norms of the modern workplace are due to cultural inertia, rather than anything more logical or evidence based.
How, exactly, does a firm handshake, or wearing a suit, mean you’re more able to properly format spreadsheets, or handle an irate customer call? Where are you meant to see yourself in 5- or 10-years’ time? Why would you want to treat your workplace “like a family”? You probably already have a real one, that you don’t see as much as you’d like. Because you have to work.
Many of these workplace norms presumably made sense when there was a much more tangible link between the work you did and the rewards you received. Back when you could afford a house deposit with a few months wages, could realistically expect to sustain a whole family on one income, and before the internet and smartphones made everyone accessible at all times, at the touch of a button.
And back before mental health awareness and understanding was so prevalent and mainstream.
Basically, the world is a very different place now, compared to when the still-dominant ideas about work and workplace culture were first established. Expecting adherence to these ‘traditional’ approaches, while offering none of the benefits that made them worthwhile, would obviously take a serious toll on employee mental health. According to the available data, that’s exactly what’s happening.
Younger employees seem to be recognising this, and are less likely to put up with it. Meanwhile, older sorts who’ve spent longer in the existing world of work (presumably with a very hefty dose of survivorship bias) are more invested in the status quo. Such an arrangement will inevitably lead to conflict, friction… stress. And we know what that does for mental health.
But a lot of this could be avoided, if workplaces and employers focussed more on what’s needed, more than how they think things should be.
The Prime Minister said that people with mental health issues should be expected to engage with the world of work. But a functional relationship is a mutual, two-way one. The ‘world of work’ also needs to seriously engage with mental health issues, and our evolving understanding of them. But it’s often unwilling to do so.
Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist, author, and spent seven years teaching psychiatry and mental health at a postgraduate level, He covers how the modern workplace affects mental health in greater depth in his latest book, Emotional Ignorance.