Worked to death: When going to work kills

Melanie Lofgren
10/07/09
11:28 a.m.

Unfortunately, working too hard can result in death. Among high levels of stress, one may feel too pressured mentally and commit suicide or acquire a mental illness or working too hard physically can result in heart attack or stroke. There have been 24 suicides and 13 attempted suicides among the France Telecom employees just in 2008(out of 100,000 employees). The deputy chief of France Telecom resigned among the chaos. Many of these suicides are linked to pressure and change in the company as a result of the recession. Employees are also going to work while feeling ill or unwell. "Employers have to recognize that people take changes differently; some people can deal with the uncertainty and other people undergo a paralysis," states Patricia Pegg Jones, a health and well-being program leader at the Work Foundation. In Japan, these cases of death from over-working are so common that the Japanese have adopted the name “karoshi”. “Karoshi”, literally meaning death from over-working, came into used around 1990 and the government has recognized 337 of these deaths last year. Toshiro Ueyanagi, a Japanese lawyer specializing in these deaths, thinks the number is actually around 10,000. "I think there are two reasons why "karoshi" is prevalent in Japan -- a hard-working tradition and very weak laws and regulation in the workplace," he told CNN. He also states that competition from overseas, de-regulation, and increased globalization has demanded workers to work harder and longer hours. One example, released in July 2008 by a Japanese labor bureau, was of a man who worked for Toyota and died from heart failure caused by over-working. His wife claimed that in the two last months of his life, he averaged 80 hours of overtime per month.


This is sometime that I feel hits close to home. I personally already battle with anxiety and stress but the thought of this kind of stress in the workplace is scary. I worry constantly about the state of the economy, especially since I am graduating this year, and if I will find decent work soon. I have always been a hard worker, pushing myself constantly, even to the point of making myself sick. I never thought that I could actually work so hard that I could bring upon a heart attack. This is an eye-opener. A recession is a scary thing and I had no idea it was killing so many people indirectly.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/06/work.death/index.html