Controlling stress at work

During the last few years there has been a growing debate about the work and the demands associated with it. This was partly in response to the realisation that there was only a poor correlation between objective standards of living, albeit rising ones and measures of subjective satisfaction and wellbeing. This discrepancy upset the traditional view that the quality of working life would continue to improve with increasing material wellbeing. Clearly other factors were operating and the notion of 'stress' came to be recognised as one of these. The author (1966) described the causes and consequences of ' Frasers Disease', a sickness characterised by a sense of unworthiness and a lack of purpose or prospects by feelings of isolation from fellow men (sic) and a restriction of self-expression. Nowadays we would give these factors somewhat different labels but the emphasis remains the same. In the work setting, organisational factors are largely to blame and prevention and management are the keys to control.