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Untreated mental illness can affect bottom line
By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer
The health and well being of employees is becoming more of a concern for companies, with a variety of programs being offered as a benefit, including wellness programs, gym memberships and smoking cessation programs.
However, one area that has received less attention is mental health, which is regrettable, because aside from the obvious health-related benefits of promoting wellness in the workplace, addressing mental health makes good business sense.
The National Mental Health Association pointed to current research showing a significant mind/body connection, with 90% of employees saying their mental health and personal problems spill over into their professional lives. Mental health conditions are reported to be the second leading cause of absenteeism.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, in the United States, where depression affects nearly one in 10 people, the estimated cost of the disability is $43 billion per year in missed work days, medical expenses and premature death.
All mental illnesses combined account for a cost of $52 billion per year in lost workdays and productivity.
The Institute of Stress, referring to a report completed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health on stress in the workplace, provides figures gathered from surveys over a wide range of industries. The figures on the cost to business are cause for alarm.
According to a 2000 Integra Survey:
• 40% of job turnover is due to stress.
Replacing an average employee today costs between $3,000 and $13,000.
• 60% to 80% of accidents on the job are stress related.
• A jury in New York awarded nearly $6 million in 1996 to three women for repetitive stress injury allegedly due to faulty computer keyboards.
• Repetitive musculo-skeletal injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, have become the nation’s leading workplace health cost and account for almost a third of all workers’ compensation awards.
Studies show that keyboard entry operators who are under stress (because they are uncertain as to whether their activities are being monitored for performance evaluation) have a significantly higher incidence of such complaints and injuries.
A 2000 Gallup Poll noted that occupational pressures are believed to be responsible for:
• 30% of workers suffering from back pain.
• 28% complaining of stress.
• 20% feeling fatigued.
• 13% with headaches.
In addition,
• 40% of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful.
• 25% view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives.
Three fourths of employees believe that workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago.
• 29% of workers felt quite a bit or extremely stressed at work.
• 26% of workers said they were “often or very often burned out or stressed by their work.”
Job stress is more strongly associated with health complaints than financial or family problems.
The report points to several causes for the rise in workplace stress, including an increased number of hours worked per week (with the United States passing Japan for the first time in history in this category), as well as job insecurity following the dot-com bubble burst with subsequent layoffs and outsourcing of jobs to other countries.
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