According to a significant national survey, four out of ten Americans who are working say their occupations have a detrimental impact on their mental health.
33 percent of respondents indicated their job had a “slightly” negative impact on their mental health, while 7% had “very” bad consequences.
Nearly half of young workers (18–29 years old) reported having poor mental health as a result of their occupations.
However, only 3% of employees out of 10 indicated an influence that was either “very” favorable (7%) or “somewhat” positive (23%).
It follows a Harvard study that revealed the US generation’s obsession with taking selfies is costing the economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Nearly 16,000 working individuals in the US participated in the most recent study, which was conducted by analytics company Gallup. However, the results cover a considerably wider population. There are around 160 million individuals working in the US.
Compared to other working population categories, employees who were young and female were more likely to report having lower mental health. Compared to men, who reported poor or fair mental health at 15%, women were 23% more likely.
As a result, among all age-by-gender categories, working women under the age of 30 bear the biggest burden of fair or poor mental health (36%) Gallup reported.
Approximately one-third of male and female employees under the age of 30 reported having fair or poor mental health, compared to 11% of those between the ages of 50 and 64 and 9% of those 65 and over.
The improvements in older persons’ mental health may be attributable to career gains, a change to more fulfilling work, or working out of choice rather than necessity.
Workers were not particularly questioned in the poll about how their jobs harmed their mental health.
The workforce’s poor mental health is ominous for the economy. Gallup estimates that a lost workday costs full-time employees $340 per day and part-time employees $170 per day.
When extrapolated throughout the entire workforce, it was discovered that employees with “fair” or “poor” mental health take an average of approximately 12 unscheduled days off year, which costs the economy close to $48 billion in lost productivity.
Early on in the Covid pandemic, when many businesses and the people who worked there were under pressure due to a forced shift to distant labor, isolation, and worry about the unique spreading disease, mental health problems in the workforce became painfully obvious.
In addition to several school and daycare closures, the pandemic’s start put additional stress on individuals who had to balance working regular hours with caring for children and maintaining a work-life balance.
Over the past few years, an increasing number of prominent firms have increased their employee coverage for mental health treatments, making employee mental health a higher priority.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, since the Covid epidemic began, 39% of significant employers have changed their health insurance plans to increase access to mental health services. About 23% of American employees said in the spring of 2017 that their employers had started using new mental wellness resources since the pandemic’s beginning.
The Biden administration has also drawn attention to the problem of workplace mental health. Last month, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released the Framework for Mental Health & Well-Being in the Workplace with the goal of assisting businesses in setting up their mental healthcare infrastructure for maintaining the wellbeing of their employees.
As we go through the worst of the pandemic, Dr. Murthy stated, “We have the chance and the power to create workplaces that are engines for mental health and well-being.”
“It will need organizations to rethink how they protect workers from danger, build a feeling of connection among workers, demonstrate to workers their value, create room for their life outside of work, and promote their growth,” he continued.
Because both organizations and workers will gain from it, it will be worthwhile.
