This week is European Health and Safety Week. The theme for this year is Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress – EU-OSHA and its partners aim to get Europe talking about stress and psychosocial risks in the workplace and how we can tackle it together.
In support of this, safety-focused video production company Out-Takes has produced Work Under Pressure to demonstrate how stress can affect people in the workplace. The film tells the story of Neil Moon, who was so severely bullied by co-workers that he attempted suicide. Neil suffered a breakdown so severe that it kept him out of work for five years. Neil wants to share his experience as widely as possible to highlight the issues around stress and other mental health issues. Experts from Restore and Root & Branch also appear in the film. The mental health charities, based in Oxfordshire, helped Neil in his recovery.
Out-Takes said in a statement: “Please watch the film and share it as widely as possible. Mental Health is a serious issue for businesses and people alike, and it needs to be tackled. As one of our interviewees says if one in 6 employees had an accident at work in any one year there would be an outcry but because it is mental health nothing is being done.”
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.
We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.
Sorry
Didn’t like the film- it was about bullying and harassment-not stress. The people who were talking came across as victims(sorry!). I better understood stress when earlier this year a steely PA from our directorate, during resilience workshop, admitted to suffering from stress and suddenly not been able to cope. That impressed me, in that if she could succumb to stress so could anyone
Nobody could bully her; it was all down to her pushing herself too hard and having unrealistic expectations of what she could do and her manager not realising what was happening to her.
Hi Andrew,appreciate your viewpoint, but don’t you think that both your example and that in the video are both different kinds of stress? Stress and mental health is a very difficult thing to measure, and one size doesn’t necessarily fit all when it comes to the issues surrounding it.
Andrew, I am sorry to read your comments on Work Under Pressure and respect your opinion.. I would like to say that the reason I shared my story, was not because I felt like a victim. I shared it because I had to learn the hard way how dangerous Psycho-social risks actually are and did not want anyone else to go through the things I did as part of my recovery. If you understood more fully the psychological effects of bullying you would understand that one of the most damaging effects of it is being in a state of flight… Read more »