The month of April is Stress Awareness Month which has been held every April since 1992 and which is designed to increase public awareness about both the causes of and cures for what in many parts of the world is a stress epidemic.

Stress has been a topic and theme that has always interested me both in a personal and professional way. My interest probably started when as a teenager I was aware of two adults in my life who were deeply affected by stress. One was an individual who worked constantly and relentlessly – people around him tried to get him to slow down, to take a break, to look after himself by eating better and not drinking so much. All of it was to no avail as he powered on to the get the next task done with an invisible deadline focussing his mind and work pressure dominating his priority. He used to dismiss concern by saying he was a ‘workaholic’ and he needed therapy not criticism.

He quite literally worked himself to death because one day he dropped dead in his late fifties of a massive heart attack. At his funeral people talked about how his stress and workaholism had killed him with someone in my earshot opining that “There are too many in this graveyard who are there because of stress.”

The other person I’m thinking about was someone who was continually anxious and who was always concerned that what they did or how they performed was never good enough. They had held down a good job but over time they got more and more anxious and their life and relationships began to be deeply affected by the pressures they felt they were under at work. Despite very real and honest attempts by managers and employer they continually felt that they were falling short and what started as occasional days off work morphed into days and weeks. After a while they were in the language of the time ‘signed off with stress.’

Two very different instances but with one common link – stress. After this I went on to study the nature of stress and in particular occupational burnout and its relationship to self-identity. After conducting just short of a hundred interviews I realised just how complex the whole nature of stress was but just how devastating it could be not just for occupational role but for your very health and wellbeing and the relationships you were or were not able to have. Stress really was and is a killer and can change lives dramatically.

According to research in 2022/23:

• There were 875,000 cases of work-related stress, depression or anxiety.
• Stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 49% of all work-related ill-health cases and 54% of all working days lost due to work-related ill-health.
• The main work factors cited as causing work-related stress, depression or anxiety include the demands of the job, lack of control, lack of information and support, work relationships, and roles and responsibilities.

There is a huge amount that organisations and employers can do which not only fulfils a legal duty, but I would argue a moral one, to ensure the health and wellbeing of their employees. Doing so as the HSE argues is good for business as it increases productivity, reduces sickness absence and nurtures staff.

In the last few years, we have seen across the board an increased awareness in targeted resources and support to improve mental wellbeing for the workforce not least after the pandemic.

Having said all that – and we certainly need to continue to resource and develop practical work-based mental health supports – I think there is much more to reducing stress than responding with support after stress has occurred – there are clear preventative approaches.

One of the few insights I have gained over the years in researching and reading about stress is that there is an inextricable relationship between the stress one experiences in work or life in general and the extent to which your role or job of work is valued or you feel valued personally in life or relationships.

When I interviewed people nearly three decades ago about what made them stressed – yes the volume of work, lack of structure of support, financial and other pressures all were commonplace – but what was highlighted more than anything was the extent to which they felt they were not valued in their role.

Jump forward to conversations I’ve been having in the last 4 weeks, and it has felt to me as if I’ve turned back the clock. Time and time again home carers, nurses in care homes and managers in care services have told me that what affects them and their colleagues more, what adds to the stress is that they feel the job they do is not valued, understood, respected, or considered of worth by others around them. Put simply they are saying to me that a significant part of the stress they are enduring is because of a perceived lack of worth and value impacting on both occupational and personal self-esteem.

The pandemic brought about the moment of the clapping syndrome – where every Thursday (eventually for social care) people would gather in the street or on their front steps and visibly thank key workers by clapping. But no sooner had the claps echoed into silence, frontline care staff fell into the old routine and habit of being told they were ‘just a carer’; of others being more rewarded by pay increases, of struggling to get people to consider that social care was just as important as the NHS. People like me go on about this imbalance a lot – for instance how we have a ministerial role which talks about NHS Recovery but not one for the equally if not more pandemic traumatised social care world and workforce. At the frontline, workers are stressed to an extent and degree that I and others haven’t witnessed – it is a set of system harms resulting in real illness, fatigue and burnout.

But for many it isn’t just about salary and reward, about systems and models, it is about how society does or more honestly does not value the job and role, the professionalism and expertise entailed in the role of frontline care work.

Collectively we will only address the burnout and stress, the breakdown and despair at the heart of both paid and indeed even more so unpaid care, if as a whole community and society we start to value care and support as the heart of our being community with one another.

I know that many carers love and find huge personal satisfaction from their job and what it brings and means to the people they support – the truth of that is seen in the long service and dedicated professionalism of thousands of women and men who would be capable of earning so much more in other sectors. But we also, I would suggest, have to recognise those we lose to care, those who leave and give up, those who are stressed and burnt out because they simply don’t feel valued or wanted by wider society. As one put it to me recently. ‘“What I do is who I am. I can’t imagine not being a carer. But there are so many who think my job is of no consequence and who brush me aside. When that happens, I feel so empty and just want to scream.”

If we are to address workforce and personal stress in the care sector, we must surely start by valuing the very essence of the role of care and support? Sadly, we have a long way to go on that journey but it has to start sometime.

Donald Macaskill

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash