
Poor mental health at work 'widespread' - pmoriarty
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45470517
======
elvinyung
Here's a possible hot take: when will we start treating this as a systemic
_and_ structural issue? When will we stop privatizing the issue of mental
health, treating it exclusively as basically chemical imbalances within
individual bodies, and start recognizing that there must be something deeper,
something perhaps cultural or political, at work here?

~~~
retube
Not to trivialize people with genuine issues, but experiencing "stress,
anxiety and low mood" is completely normal and natural. In fact not
experiencing these kinds of emotions from time to time would indicate an
issue! I do wonder whether the scope of what's deemed "mental illness" is
being widened

~~~
m_fayer
For a long time in many places, living in grinding poverty was and is "normal"
and "natural" for most people. Living with all sorts of insecurity - food,
physical safety, shelter - all normal. Evolution only selected for those of us
who manage to reproduce individually and societally, not for those who tend to
live to a ripe old age with a minimum of misery. I really don't get this
formulation of "x miserable condition is perfectly natural!" when "natural" so
often == "miserable".

~~~
YinglingLight
Yes, but this is specifically about _mental health_.

I believe the increased level of physical activity, combined with greater in-
person socialization/community of our forefathers allowed them greater mental
health (and with it, greater resiliency) than people of today.

~~~
emodendroket
Perhaps, but what is the evidence that that was the case or that the causes
you cite are the ones to credit?

------
DoreenMichele
My hot take: This is "patriarchy" at work in an unchecked fashion.

Studies of primate groups suggest male leaders protect the group from external
threats, such as carnivores or war with other groups. Female leaders protect
the group from internal threats.

As a woman who is probably some kind of alpha female, I couldn't find any role
models that worked for me. I was a full time wife and mom for years and all
our leadership models are male models that we expect women to somehow emulate
and I could never make sense of it.

Reading up on the role of alpha females in primate groups helped me feel
functional and not crazy or broken. It gave me a model I could relate to.

Women with careers tend to learn male -- or yang -- leadership models. YC
claims it is so successful because Jessica was maternal and nurturing and they
had sit down dinners like an extended family.

And I sometimes think that's what's lacking out in the world of work, that
feminine influence that says you need to take care of your people to be
successful and not just run them into the ground.

/things I expect to regret stupidly voicing

~~~
brickcitymang
I wish one day I report to a female boss.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I don't know that gender per se fixes it. Historically, men were in charge of
certain kinds of work, the kind that is now paid, and women were in charge of
other kinds. These complemented each other.

As we move away from traditional family and tribe or community based social
organization towards more paid work, our male leadership patterns seem to have
become more dominant and we have lost that balance. Women with serious careers
are frequently socialized to lead like men and they are sometimes harsher than
the men as if to "prove" themselves or out of bitterness.

I'm not sure how to fix this, but the Jessica Livingston story seems to be the
exception, not the rule. From what I gather, she and Paul started the company
together as equal partners and he soon roped his previous business partners
into it. But it was initially the two of them.

When you have a male dominated organization and women rise through the ranks,
they seem to typically be broken of such feminine leadership styles. They
typically have to lead like a man to get promoted.

I'm not sure how we get there because currently the default expectation is
that women learn to lead like men to get leadership roles.

~~~
watwut
1950 are not representative for whole history and upper classes livestyle was
rarely representative of how majority of people lived. Don't use 1950 middle
class utopia as representation of how genders historically acted.

Also, those women are not "acting like men" nor doing something against
nature. They are acting like people in lead positions, full stop. Just because
it used to be only men being in that position in the past does not mean that
women in same position should be expected to do something else.

It is not male behavior, it is leader behavior. The "feminine" style is
largely adaptation to different situation - the one where you don't have much
direct power and where you depend a lot on how people feel about you. It is
normal and healthy to adapt to changing circumstances.

~~~
Raphmedia
> They are acting like people in lead positions, full stop.

No. There are core differences that push individuals towards different
leadership styles.

E.g.: "Replicating previous findings, women reported higher Big Five
Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism scores than men."
-[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/)

------
mirimir
Maybe I'm projecting, but what this translates for me is "many people hate
their jobs". And of course they often try to hide it, because they need the
money. Or the reputation, acknowledgment, or whatever.

I've never done well at work that I don't enjoy. Indeed, at work that doesn't
show up for me as play. So much so that I've been homeless (or very close to
it) at times.

But for stuff that I do enjoy, I've tended to get obsessive and driven.
Because it's been so much fun, and/or so much of a challenge, and such a rush
when things worked out. In other words, I tend to be a workaholic.

But otherwise, if it wasn't (or was no longer) fun, I've found myself focusing
on something else that was fun. And in many cases, that became my next career.
At least four times.

For example, I spent several years working as a data geek. But how that
started was managing snailmail lists for community groups. In Reflex, an early
semi-relational database in DOS. And over a few years, I migrated through
Access and eventually SQL Server, and was doing basically forensic accounting
on enterprise-scale data. At home ;)

My point is that I've been lucky. But many seem to get stuck doing stuff that
they can barely stand. Because they're constrained by obligations to family or
whatever. And in any case, there are lots of jobs that need done, which too
few people would really consider fun.

~~~
flukus
> And of course they often try to hide it, because they need the money

I suspect this is behind at least some of it, there's an expectation that we
pretend to love our jobs and pretend everything is great, lest we be branded
"not a team player". It's an extra mental tax with no benefit every day of
work.

------
_prototype_
I quit my software engineering job last May because of extreme burnout. I took
5 months off and just started working again and feel really good. Something is
seriously wrong in this industry

~~~
briandear
We sit at a desk writing code. Air conditioning, comfortable chairs, often
free snacks and high pay. I realize burnout is real, but until you’ve worked
as a refinery worker, on a road crew or a police officer, it’s hard to say
that something is wrong with “this” industry. Every single profession has
burnout. Every single profession has stress. Most people should be so lucky to
have the opportunity to get burned out in one of the highest paying
professions. If our industry has a problem, it’s that its practitioners don’t
really know what actual suffering on the job is all about. The luxury of
taking 5 months off is something unheard of for most typical middle or working
class people.

Not to diminish burnout, but claiming that the industry has a problem is just
incorrect. Some employers might have a problem — but employers in all
industries have problems. The best industry in the world has shitty employers
and the worst industry in the world has great employers.

Any normal working class person would laugh at this. It’s like first class
travelers complaining about quality of the champagne at the airport lounge. We
are immensely lucky to get to do this job. I get close to burnout from time to
time, but then I remember what it was like before I got into this industry
when I got evicted and slept in my car while DJing at dirty strip clubs just
to be able to afford food. I would have given anything for the chance to
burnout sitting in an Aeron working with all this incredible technology.

Perspective.

~~~
brickcitymang
Telling yourself that you have it better than 99% of the world is only a
temporary and ineffective remedy to career dissatisfaction. The answer is
introspection, finding out what is missing, and the life-long pursuit of self-
actualization and eventually transcendence.

------
frabcus
The news article (and hence the headline problem description figures) are to
market the charity's new site which brings together resources for helping with
mental health at work.

[https://www.mentalhealthatwork.org.uk/](https://www.mentalhealthatwork.org.uk/)

It looks useful - stuff for line managers, policy stuff, stuff specifically
about alcohol etc.

Mind are a well respected charity in the UK.

------
Ricardus
People certainly seem to be unhappy on incredibly large scales these days. I
read an interesting piece in what I think was the Atlantic 6-ish months ago,
and it basically boiled down to: We're not broken, our culture is.

I wish I could find it again, but I haven't been able to, because it expresses
perfectly ideas that I had been meaning to write, for some time.

~~~
usepgp
I would assume that most people have been unhappy for as long as there have
been people.

~~~
danieltillett
Exactly. It seems the better our lives get the more focused people become on
trivia. When you are struggling to earn enough money to keep your family alive
then concerns like having a fulfilling job are not at the top of your
concerns.

~~~
furi
It looks to me (really little more than a hunch) more like we've bettered our
lives immensely in most physical ways (removing disease, hunger, cold, etc.)
but pulled the rug out from under our feet on the social/fulfillment end of
things. We've taken an axe to most forms of community (to some extent family
as well) and sucked all the necessary social interactions out of every day
tasks.

It could just be me idealizing a past I didn't have to actually live through,
I'm not old enough to have experienced anything else, but it seems like that
is where a lot of human happiness and fulfillment comes from.

~~~
danieltillett
We tend to idealise the past like it is some sort of costume drama - in
reality the community of the past was very restricting. You did whatever your
father did if you were a man and raised a dozen kids (most of whom died) if
you were a woman. Forget about choice or living the life you wanted.

One thing I think many are missing today from our lives is some sort of
painful rite of passage struggle to give us perspective. When nothing has gone
seriously wrong in your life it is all too easy to focus on the trivial.

~~~
furi
It certainly was restricting, we didn't tear down those institutions for no
reason, but how do we go about assigning relative importance to them? If I had
a strong community but no choice in my occupation (especially if I had been
raised that way from birth) would I be happier? I instinctively want to say
no, I really really like freedom, but I don't think I have any real idea. It's
also not to say we can't have both, perhaps we've traded one unhappiness (lack
of freedom and harsh conditions) for another (lack of community and meaning
through directly helping people you care about) and our eventual destination
is finding some happy medium between the two.

~~~
danieltillett
My experience in life is people’s happiness level seems to be fairly
independent of what happens in their life. The happy are happy and the unhappy
unhappy.

------
cyberjunkie
It must be said the influx of mis-information, now over-inflated egoes, greed
and terrible mental health of the masses creates a society that is mentally
sickening towards others.

Every time someone with clarity and genuine intent points that out, society
points a finger back, saying nothing is wrong with society. Something is wrong
with your attitude. Therein lies the reason for this degrading mental health
of the masses.

------
mockingbirdy
I can recommend Erich Fromm's "The Pathology of Normalcy" \- he's a well-known
psychotherapist and author of the 20th century. He argues that we have a
systematic problem and that treating mental health problems on an individual
level is not going to solve the root problem. Basically, the structures we
live in make us sick mentally.

This book is a great read and shows ways to solve this problem.

------
tw1010
I used to read articles like this and feel like it gave me some excuse for
feeling terrible myself. But then I realized that, nah, I have to just take
responsibility for this on my own. Exersize and good (carb limited) diet and a
good amount of sleep (and all the necessary vitamins), that was the key to me
(not thinking my way out of it). (As well as avoiding toxic people and
spending most of my evenings reading[1]. I rarely code on my spare time. That
comes with career tradeoffs, but I'm ok with making them.) Sure it sucks that
it's widespread, and maybe it aught to have been a call to action for me to
fix the situation on a larger scale (create a company to tackle mental
health), but those thoughts can prematurely add burden on you while you
could've much more quickly solved the problem by simply ignoring all the world
and its mental health problems and focus on improving your own life.

[1] If you feel like "books are boring" then that's a sign you're not
following your bliss. Put down that boring book. There are plenty to go
around. You'll read at most maybe 1000 books in your life, and there are
without a doubt a thousand books that all make you feel like you can't put it
down. If the book you're reading isn't that, eject as soon as possible (before
you've sunk even more cost into it) and go out searching for one you think
will tickle the interest nodules in your brain to an ecstatic degree.

~~~
projektir
I think you got it backwards. It's good that this worked for you, but this
kind of thinking leads to a race to the bottom where the original cause is
continually increased until individuals who can get out of it basically cease
to exist.

What's important is not whether some individuals can pull out. What's
important is the overall effect.

~~~
tw1010
I totally agree that it's a systemic problem and that society shouldn't ignore
it. I'm not trying to shift blame from institution to individuals, it's just
that I myself have noticed that thinking too much about how this was a problem
in the bigger picture put unnecessary friction in a project that was already
challenging enough (going from an unhealthy state to a healthy state).

Just because I'm talking about this in public doesn't mean this is how I think
the public think about it. Imagine my original comment as advice given in a
dimly lit intimate one-on-one conversation, not something I'm shouting from a
stage.

I want institutions and policymakers to think of it as a systemic problem, but
I want individuals to know that the most efficient strategy for they
themselves is to ignore all the worlds ills and focus on using their limited
energy in a way that is least likely to fail.

------
mothsonasloth
This article makes me think of the time I spent several hours discussing with
my grandparents, on how they survived in the 50s, 60s in the UK.

At first I was shocked about how my grandfather could finish up his work as a
joiner, and then spend another week going around shipyards, factories and
other places looking for work.

When my granny had my mum she only took two weeks off to look after her. Then
started working part time as a seamstress.

I asked them if they ever felt sad or depressed and they flat out said no.
They said they didn't have the time to be like that.

I wonder if I would have been the same if I time travelled back to that era.

~~~
pjc50
I've heard this line of reasoning before, and it glosses over a lot of the
traditional downsides of this lifestyle - things like extremely heavy drinking
and public or domestic violence. You got a "tighter" community at the expense
of extreme conformism socially enforced.

~~~
ForceOfPhil
This is a very good point.

I think another factor is the type of Jobs. Joiner and Seamstress are jobs
which create something useful.

Many jobs today do not create such obvious value, people see numbers on a
system change and are in constant competition with their peers - opposed to
"enough work for everyone.

I write code for a college and manage their MIS - there are days that are
great where I see the value I am providing and problem solving.

Then there are days where I feel so powerless and trapped by the system and I
can do nothing about the issues I have with this job (lazy co-workers,
managers not including target audience in the development, no technical
specs/generic wire frames I need to fill out to an entire project, project
manager having 0 technical proficiency) all because this place is a minefield
of regulation over performance.

~~~
pjc50
Indeed. This is part of the whole "bullshit jobs" line of inquiry; also
"emotional labour".

> trapped by the system and I can do nothing about the issues I have with this
> job

You've been given just enough autonomy to take psychological responsibility
for how the thing turns out, but not enough autonomy to actually make it
happen. A common route to misery and self-blame.

------
philpem
"Only half of people talk to their employer about health and MH issues"

Well there might be something systemic there.. like the culture of a lot of
companies to "manage out" what they see as "troublesome" employees -- union
reps and members, the unhealthy... Things like the rampant misuse of Bradford
Factor Scoring (which the University of Bradford School of Business disowned
some years ago) basically guarantee that taking sick leave or asking for help
will result in a dismissal.

------
lazulicurio
I wonder if there's any historical data back to the late 90s, and how much
might be driven by anticipation of future economic conditions.

I know at my work there's a sense of---not quite despair, but---waiting for
the other shoe to drop. Even though the recession is officially over, the
whole system still seems fragile.

I'm sure there's other factors at play too, but I feel like at a macro scale
the economy is towards the base of a society's pyramid of needs. It's a proxy
for availability to food, shelter, etc. James Carville said it best: "it's the
economy, stupid". Looking at the CCI[1], although it's recovered a bit since
2008, it's below historical levels.

IMO, while there's plenty of other issues, it makes sense to address the more
fundamental ones first. But I don't have any solutions---just my two cents.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_confidence_index#/m...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_confidence_index#/media/File%3AU.S._Consumer_Confidence_Index.png)

------
lettergram
I've been contemplating this problem since I first met Greg Baugues at UIUC,
when he was giving a talk[1]. The thing is, I feel employers actual would / do
care about mental health (generally); at least to a point. We're all humans...
It's just an uncomfortable topic for pretty much everyone involved.

As an employer how do you approach the problem? Ideally, you could identify
improvement methods, and implement them. This would make employees happier and
work harder; while at the same time make employees have a better life (win-
win). This makes me think it has likely more to do with the interaction
between the people/employees or the lack of long-term strategy of a business.

[1]
[https://www.greaterthancode.com/2017/05/17/episode-033-menta...](https://www.greaterthancode.com/2017/05/17/episode-033-mental-
illness-with-greg-baugues/)

------
danieltillett
This is what happens when you make the definition of mental illness so loose
that almost everyone is captured. While it might help those with an axe to
grind or a vested interest in ramping the numbers, it doesn’t help those with
serious mental illness problems.

~~~
mirimir
That's a useful perspective, I think. I mean, isn't it useful to distinguish
between "poor fit for job" and "mental health issues"? Would we expect
mentally healthy people to do well, and be happy with, any arbitrary sort of
job?

~~~
danieltillett
The supposed aim of all this trivialization of mental illness appears to be to
destigmatize mental illness, but in practice it just prevent us from helping
those who really need help. When 75% of the population is labeled as having a
mental illness then we can’t find those who really need help - the finding a
needle in a pile of needles problem.

The reality is most people are unhappy with their lives (at times) and always
have been and only a small percentage are seriously unwell.

~~~
projektir
> The reality is most people are unhappy with their lives (at times) and
> always have been and only a small percentage are seriously unwell.

If you ask me most people being unhappy with their lives is a problem.

~~~
mirimir
Isn't that rather a symptom of modern society? As others have noted.

Still, it's certainly not that modern society is horrible. Far more people
(especially in "developed" countries) live far better lives (materially,
anyway) than at any time before. But maybe what's missing is meaning. Family
and other social connections. Like "Why am I doing this?"

Maybe it's just an unavoidable consequence of the extreme specialization of
labor in modern society. And that there are many important jobs that just
aren't much fun. Or at least, aren't acknowledged or rewarded well enough.
Don't come with enough status.

~~~
projektir
Why would this be a modern phenomenon? Nothing I've read of history leads me
to believe this is a modern phenomenon. People in the modern world just have
more of a voice.

~~~
mirimir
I guess. So have people always hated their jobs? Maybe so. Even hunter-
gatherers probably complain about needing to hunt and gather all the time.

------
bigbluedots
I wonder how much of a contribution is made by 'having to work' in order to
survive. I suspect that most people would happily never work again if that was
an option, and if that is the case then most people are spending a large
percentage of their time doing something they don't want to do. At that point,
issues with mental health are no surprise.

------
fallingfrog
Well, considering that "work" as it's commonly defined means "tasks done at
the orders of a superior", it can hardly help but be mentally harmful. Any
task done under the control and for the profit of another is in some sense
abuse.

------
seatdrummer
Many of the comments here align very closely with ideas presented in the
unabomber manifesto.

------
imperio59
The survey is done by a charity that accepts money from corporate sponsors.
Dubious source at best, paid shills at worst.

~~~
shanghaiaway
This forum is owned by a corporation and functions as their main marketing
tool.

~~~
alayne
Yes and I don't accept Y Combinator's word as empirical science either.

------
alayne
I'm extremely sympathetic to mental health issues, but this article is based
on a survey by a mental health charity. This is junk science.

------
komodosquirrel
In Europe specialist jobs are highly taxed. Knowing that every month you have
to give away almost 40% of your earnings, how much you had to sacrifice, you
start to question whether it all makes sense. Way out is to take anti
depressants and pretend everything is fine or ask for a raise so that you get
your net pay and what you have been paying in taxes and then try to ignore
even more tax you have to pay.

~~~
mick87
It differs depending on where in Europe you live of course, my perspective is
from the Nordics. I see it, instead of "they take x % of my pay", as that we
collectively decided to fund these healthcare, paid vacation, maternity and
paternity leave, education, child care, social security so that everyone has a
fair chance and are taken care of.

~~~
a008t
I suspect this kind of mentality only works in a fairly homogeneous society,
where everyone enjoys the collective benefits fairly uniformly.

------
epx
Didn't like the sentence 'Poor mental health affects half of all employees',
as if employers were responsible.

~~~
onion2k
In the context of stress at work, who would be responsible if it's _not_ the
employer?

For the majority of people their employer wants to pay them as little as
possible and get as much effort back as they can, with rigid and bureaucratic
rules in place because there's basically no trust in the business. That's
stressful. I think the majority of us here on HN are very fortunate in the
sense that we either work for an employer who's invested in making sure we're
not overly stressed (startups and tech companies are _way_ better than most
businesses), or we _are_ the employer and we get to choose how much stress we
take on.

For the majority of healthy people, especially without kids, work and their
employer is their primary source of stress.

~~~
epx
This is almost a tautology; of course not working, not doing anything at all
would be less stressful.

But work is way less stressful today than, say, two generations ago, yet
people are falling like flies. I don't deny the problem but the problem is
elsewhere.

~~~
adrianN
Two generations ago one income was enough for a family and work-work and
family-work were split among a couple. Today people are expected to just do
both.

~~~
briandear
One income is still enough. It’s a question of priorities and lifestyle
expectations.

~~~
adrianN
Not if you want to stay middle class.

