How did the 2008-11 financial crisis affect work-related common mental distress? Evidence from 393 workplaces in Great Britain

Abstract

This paper analyses how the 2008-11 financial crisis relates to work-related common mental distress of those with continuous employment during the crisis. The literature connecting the 2008-11 financial crisis to common mental distress (anti-depressant drug use, suicide, etc.) generally estimates a negative effect. We used a sample of 393 workplaces from the 2011 Work and Employment Relations Study (WERS) for which employers and worker representatives agreed on that the crisis affected the workplace. WERS then provides detailed questions about how the financial crisis affected the workplace. We use these questions to show which crisis-induced work-changes are important for work-related common mental distress. In the British-context, increased workload and changes in nonfinancial benefits of work are most relevant worsening work-related common mental distress by 1.8 and 0.9 on a scale from 0-30 respectively.

Positioning work related stress – GPs’ reasoning about using the WSQ combined with feedback at consultation

“…Stress was viewed as an individual lifestyle problem rather than a sign of potential ill health, even if circumstances not directly related to the personal level could affect the work-related ill health. For instance, work-changes induced by economic crisis were found to affect work-related common mental distress [3] and precarious employments were found to increase the risk of receiving a disability pension [4]. One reason for emphasizing the importance of not turning stress into a disease could be the risk of medicalizing everyday stressful events, as this might lead to overdiagnosis and additional strains for the health care sector.…”

“…In Sweden, excessive workload is the most common cause of work-related illness among both women and men [ 2 ]. The importance of finding efficient measures cannot be underestimated, especially so in times of economic crisis and precarious employments [ 3 , 4 ]. Early detection and treatment of work-related stress (WRS) as well as identification of underlying factors are seen as important to avoid absence from work [ 5 – 8 ].…”

Black Swan Pandemic and the Risk of Pilot Suicide

“…This study also demonstrated that the combination of factors including career development, autonomy at work, organizational climate and family support and cohesion are important regarding job satisfaction, but also potentially increase the risk of accidents if work and personal stress levels are left unchecked. It has been shown that economic crises increase the mental burden on work and workload (7). In addition to this, it is well established that an economic downturn is associated with an increase in suicides in the general population (8,9).…”

The Health Externalities of Downsizing

“…Often they focus on different types of stress, in particular shocks during childhood, such as famines (Lindeboom, Portrait & van den Berg 2010, van den Berg, Pinger & Schoch 2016 or the death of a family member (Persson & Rossin-Slater 2018, Schmidpeter 2019. Another strand of the literature interprets bad economic conditions or import competition as stress and estimates effects on health, both during childhood (van den Berg, Lindeboom & Portrait 2006) and adulthood (e.g., Adda & Fawaz 2020, Johnston et al 2020, Kronenberg & Boehnke 2019, Pierce & Schott 2020, Ruhm 2000. We also speak to the literature showing that unemployment leads to increases in 'deaths of despair' (i.e., deaths due to drug and alcohol abuse and suicides) using aggregate data for the US (e.g., Case & Deaton 2017, Hollingsworth et al 2017.…”