Work makes you healthy
The news is filled with stories of ill health associated with work. Stories of stress, back pain, RSI, injuries and accidents all appear with alarming frequency. Perhaps it’s no surprise that we seem to share the view that work is bad for us, and that it makes us ill.
Interestingly, a review of the evidence in 2006 demonstrated conclusively that the opposite is true. (See Waddell and Burton). They concluded that:
“Strong evidence exists that unemployment is harmful to health. The unemployed have higher mortality, poorer general health, poorer mental health and higher medical consultation, medication consumption, and hospital admission rates.”
They highlighted a number of other key factors:
- Being out of work is associated with a loss of general fitness, as the individual becomes physically inactive.
- Both physical and mental health worsens as a person goes off sick. In other words, time off sick actually increases the illness.
- The opposite has also been demonstrated. Returning to work can help individuals recover from both physical and mental health problems.
- Rates of suicide and death increase. In fact, the health risks of being out of work in the longer term is greater than the risk of other killer diseases such as heart disease.
- Individuals become socially excluded and isolated.
- Individuals’ wealth reduces, and they get stuck in the poverty trap.
- Children in workless households have poorer health, and are more likely to be workless themselves when they reach adulthood. In other words, the problem spreads across generations.
These statements are almost unbelievable, and yet the research underpinning them is very clear.
However, it isn’t a complete one-way street. It is clear that other factors have an influence. Most jobs are generally good for health, but between 5-10% of jobs actually worsen health. Therefore, it isn’t right simply to force everyone back to work. Additionally, worklessness is recognized to be a much bigger problem than ill health. Areas of regional deprivation can undermine the best medical efforts to try and help individuals back to work.
In summary, there has been a sea change in how doctors view time off sick. We used to view work as a risk, and potentially harmful to physical and mental health. As a result, sickness absence helped to protect the worker. We’ve now realized that work is generally good for physical and mental health, and we need to recognize the risks and harm of long termworklessness.
Back to work!
Dr Charlie Vivian
Medical Director
Corporate Health Ltd
14th November 2013
Reference
Is Work Good for your Health and Wellbeing? Waddell G and Burton K. 2006. TSO