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Chronic Stress Could Lead To Depression and Dementia, Scientists Warn (independent.co.uk)
schwit1 writes: A major review of published research suggests that chronic stress and anxiety can damage areas of the brain involved in emotional responses, thinking and memory, leading to depression and even Alzheimer's disease. Dr Linda Mah, the lead author of the review carried out at a research institute affiliated to the University of Toronto, said: 'Pathological anxiety and chronic stress are associated with structural degeneration and impaired functioning of the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, which may account for the increased risk of developing neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and dementia.'
I like to remember that cortisol, a stress hormone, is also the one that kills salmon after their long stressful swim to their home river.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I mean physiologically.
Anything that strains or exhausts the body. So there are 2 types of stress: eustress, or stress that has short-term benefits like exercise and sex. Then there's distress that has short term damage to the body like minor drug use or a panic attack. Modern living is fairly consistent in its demands on the body, which is usually a good thing allowing the problems of civilization to be structured and compartmentalized. The problem comes when all compartments of modern living cause stress. Then the body (and mind) cannot repair and refresh (and learn). Now people tend to say they're stressed even while doing minor activities, like talking to (polite) strangers. Scientists have determined that the brain in normal use is exhausted before the muscles are, in normal use. So the question becomes: Is this a misnaming of a minor activity which normal people can handle, or do mental tasks cause more distress than physical tasks?
Stress is known to cause systemic problems, ranging from weight gain, endocrine disruption, hair loss, and now neurodegernative conditions.
However, the actual costs of these ill health effects is not factored into the cost benefit analyses of major employers in nearly all conditions, as something other than just a potential source of losing valuable worker resources.
Seems to me that since the US has an endemic problem with stress and mental illness, at the same time also lacking good mental health infrastructure, that those causing the endemic problem (major employers who saddle on way more hours of work per employee than is sane or reasonable) should be made to pay this real cost, by being found culpable for causation of the very real health effects that thier high stress work environments induce, by means of having to pay for adult care in appropriate facilities for dementia patients, and for the costs of antipsychotics, psychoactive drugs, and mental health therapy for those they have harmed and are actively harming.
By introducing this new liability, the profit motive of forcing people into those situations will evaporate, and better working conditions should come forward naturally.
Of course, the reality is that these employers will seek radical outsourcing first, but if they all try that all at once, congress would have no choice but to intervene and introduce new labor and subcontracting laws.
Other than forcing employers to bear the weight of their own shit, (and thus reducing profits), I dont see the downside.
Secondly, nobody is forcing the employees to work in such condition. The stressed out employees are always free to use the door and switch employer.
People always make that sound so easy. For entire categories of workers, the ones often under the highest stress because they are being eaten up by not one but two jobs to keep themselves afloat, are the ones least likely to have the kind of job mobility that would result in any tangible improvement.
Back in the 90's when I was a young buck and had every employer convinced of my high technical prowess, combined with an employment market that was seriously in the engineer's favor, I used to think that way too. And for me, I did have that kind of freedom. Several decades later, along with many changes to my life circumstance and the job market in which I inhabit, I have a much greater appreciation for limitations of how much control one has over their career. And that's if you're lucky enough work in a field where "career" is an appropriate term