Health

10 HE ALTH • Fall 2019 I n May, the World Health Organization brought a brighter spotlight to what many workers may have already found obvious: People can be overworked in their jobs, and it can have a profound effect on their health. The WHO upgraded burnout to what it now calls an occupational phenomenon. Burnout, it says, is a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress not successfully managed. To those in the medical or mental health communities, the new designation can be seen as either a helpful step for greater awareness or a step too far toward pathologizing too many conditions. "It really has been an issue for awhile," Adam Volungis, a psychology professor at Assumption College in Worcester, said of burnout. "When I read [the new designation], I thought, it's about time people are recognizing it more." Dr. Darshan Hemendra Mehta, the medical director at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, sees the designation as helpful to destigmatize anxiety the harmful effects of overwork. But many of the conditions the WHO sites, he said, like pessimism and loss of interest, could be explained by other things not related to work. One prominent voice in the field thinks the designation could open the possibility of a harmful drain on resources if workers choose to claim burnout, with skyrocketing costs for paid time off or medication. "Everyone can now claim this new disorder for the compensation, depending on their personality," said Dr. Daniel Kirsch, the president of the American Institute of Stress, a group that aims to work with the industry and raise awareness of stress conditions. "Before this you had to have a physical injury or actual mental health disorder," Kirsch said. "Follow the money, and I'd bet you would find big pharma's hand in this." That burnout would require greater consideration is not news to many in the medical community, especially those who've been working to address high burnout rates in their own field. With long hours, lots of forms to fill out and other factors, 44% of physicians told the American Medical Association in January they were burned out with their jobs. "Physicians go into medicine to help people," said Dr. Stephen Tosi, the president of the UMass Memorial Medical Group in Worcester, citing other factors including hospital overcrowding and long wait times. "They want to make people feel better, and it can be frustrating when you have no control over the f low of who's coming in and how long people will be waiting." Stress easy to see today It's not just physicians. American workers of all kinds are stressed – and increasingly so – in their jobs. One poll after another has proven it. Work was the third most likely source of stress found in a 2017 American Psychological Association poll, with 61% saying they were stressed from work. That placed work only 1 percentage point behind money and 2 behind the future of our nation. In a 2017 poll by Kronos, 95% of human resource leaders said employee burnout is sabotaging workforce retention, in the words of the Lowell workplace software company. HR representatives said burnout was responsible for up to half of employee turnover, yet they found no obvious solutions. Unfair compensation was called the most likely cause of burnout. A majority of Americans (63%) believe jobs are less secure now than they were 20 to 30 years ago, and 51% anticipate jobs will become less secure in the future, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center poll. Work-life balances are often out of whack. A 2017 Pew Research Center poll found overwhelming support for stronger paid-leave benefits in a country lagging its European counterparts in paid time off for vacation, the birth of a child or other needs. Just over half (51%) said the federal government should mandate employers provide paid family and medical time off, 82% said women should have paid maternity leave, and 69% said fathers should have paid paternity leave. The United States is the only one of 41 advanced world economies not mandating paid parental leave, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in France. Massachusetts has begun requiring paid time off benefits more closely resembling what's available in European countries, with paid leave of up to 12 weeks to care for a family member, including after child birth, and up to 20 weeks for the worker's own illness. The family and medical leave act will go into effect this fall, with the first payments due from employers, but the benefit won't be available for workers until 2021. Pew has found a range of other trends are at play, too: Employees are working nearly four more hours per week than a generation ago, and more likely to have less concrete work arrangements, such as in temporary or contract work. Hitting medical community hard Coincidentally, it's the medical profession itself that may be facing the • By Grant Welker Adam Volungis, psychology profes- sor, Assumption College Being overworked in your job is now a recognized contributor to your health status Burnout syndrome "Physicians go into medicine to help people... and it can be frustrating when you have no control over the flow of who's coming in and how long people will be waiting." Dr. Stephen Tosi, president, UMass Memorial Medical Group © SKYPIXEL | DREAMSTIME.COM

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