Tales of the psychosocial: "mental and behavioral issues" at work

From New Unionism:

There is a growing realisation in the health and safety industry that the game has changed. It used to be about back strain and blood-on-the-factory-floor. Today, we need to be looking for empty boxes of prozac and beta blockers as well. In fact in most developed countries stress has now replaced back injury as the primary cause of workplace absence. The ILO acknowledged that in March this year when, for the first time, they included “mental and behavioural disorders” among the list of diseases caused by work.(1) This year, the theme of their World Day for Health and Safety at Work was “new and emerging risks”.(2)

The ILO is not alone in having found a clear link between the way we work and the rise of depression, fatigue, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, burnout and hypertension. If it’s not quite a consensus, that’s mainly because the fallout from admitting it openly could be so enormous. With this would come questions of duty and responsibility, and then of liability.

Read more here.