Stress Awareness Month highlights rising employee absences due to stress and anxiety, prompting urgent calls for enhanced mental health support.
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00:00Stress is a really difficult thing to sort of define because of course it
00:05comes from the individual and we've all felt stress in our sort of our lives at
00:10some point or other but I don't doubt because I sort of work with people who
00:13sort of been to this and if of course if you're feeling particularly sort of
00:16anxious about the work that you've got to carry out or other sort of
00:19personal issues which impinge upon that it certainly undermines the ability to
00:23carry out the work. Now in many cases people sort of carry on but of course
00:27you know the the impact that this has upon the sort of the long-term health
00:31has got to be corrosive. The fact is of course though we're in a state
00:36where something like one in four working people have got some sort of disability
00:40and of course we tend to associate disability with the things which are
00:43physical but increasingly of course you know the mental aspects are sort of
00:47disabling so it's a good thing to sort of recognize it but I also accept that
00:52of course if you're an employer and you know for instance in the worst case
00:55scenario if you run to the average a quarter your workforce are not able to
00:59work because of stress that's particularly problematic. The rising
01:03number of people absent from work due to stress and anxiety represents a major
01:09public health issue. National statistics now show over half a million individuals
01:14under 35 are unable to work because of long-term mental health problems. So you
01:21know what do we do? Well quite clearly we have to sort of to look at sort of
01:25assisting people, support them, doing all the sort of things that dare I say good
01:29employers should be so looking to but again I also recognize we live in a
01:34sort of an age where of course it's about sort of pressure and hitting
01:36targets and indeed if you don't do that and don't make enough money you've got a
01:40business which of course creates its own sort of pressure and indeed I'm speaking
01:44at a time when we're in a world where of course you know it's not about what
01:48you do, your sort of work may be impacted by sort of decisions taken in another
01:52country which of course may sort of take away the sort of the market for the sort
01:56of things that you're sort of selling to. So yeah as I say I always compare it to
02:00you know in the sort of the Second World War there was a lot of stress with that
02:04but of course there was a sort of collective unity. I think that one of the
02:08problems that we've got particularly amongst younger people is the so-called
02:10lockdown effect. People who were sort of isolated now of course we all accept it
02:15was a the right thing to do at the time but of course the long-term sort of
02:19mental anguish that this has caused because you know as human creatures we'd
02:22like to sort of be with others and being locked away is not good for the sort of
02:26the human spirit.