...
Why prevention is better than treatment and what’s the number one first step towards it

Since the industrial revolution, we have made the mistake of asking the human to behave more and more like a machine. To add insult to injury, we are about to replace the human with the machine he helped create.

We have invented a term for sanitising the employees of their characteristics, of their background history and emotions: “being more professional”. Millions have been invested in behavioural research to pinpoint the traits of the ideal candidate. Terms such as “team player, working well under pressure and tight deadlines, thrive in a competitive environment, etc.” have become the H.R. religion in their selection process of employment.

And guess what? The first to fulfill the criteria were the cut-throat unscrupulous individuals, willing to sacrifice their humanness in exchange for career advancement. The others have learned to adapt to the requirements and play along the best they could.

If in the lab these behavioural formulas seemed promising, in real life they proved short-sighted and overall disastrous from the socio-economical viewpoint.

Now, the number one killer in the world is stress at work. The number one cause for divorce and relationship problems is the imbalance between work and family life, the lack of personal time for introspection, for inner growth, sacrificed on the altar of the career advancement.

This short-sighted formula for economic growth has brought us on the brink of self-destruction — personal and as a society. The implications are astronomical!

The dehumanised worker has been trained and retrained in all kinds of behavioural strategies, from sales to management. When laid-off, it had to reinvent itself, to adopt new skills and to fulfill new requirements but those of its own and its family. This led us, as a society, to the development of incredible things, but at what cost? And more importantly, how long can we keep going like that?

In 2018 the WHO announced that one in four individuals suffers or will suffer from a mental health condition. In the United States, the rate of suicide at work has increased from 1999- 2013 by 41% as reported by The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (source https://goo.gl/xHMJFa).

In Britain, as reported by the Independent on 14 May 2018, a third of the population declared to have had suicidal thoughts, been unable to cope with the unchecked levels of stress. This frightening reality was brought to light by one of the largest ever reports undergone by the Mental Health Foundation (MHF), which calls for the regulation of the workplace stress as a “safety hazard”.

“Thirty-two percent of adults said they had experienced suicidal feelings as a result of stress, while 16 percent of adults said they had self-harmed as a result of stress.” (Source: https://goo.gl/knw1mS)

Around the globe, this situation is spinning out of control.

France: “Government forced to act on police suicides.” The Local. 25 November 2017

China: “Apple factory suicide reignites concerns.” The Telegraph. Good Electronics. 20 January 2018

Global: “Horrific work pressures are causing suicides.” CBC News. NPR report. Daily Mail. 17 Feb. 2018

Britain: “University tutor killed himself after struggling with workload.”

“A dedicated university tutor took his own life at work after his increasing workload meant he was “often unable to spend time with his family”. Malcolm Anderson, 48, the deputy head of section and a personal tutor in accounting at Cardiff University’s Business School, went to his office and left two notes – one for his family and one saying his workload had finally got to him.”

Cardiff University statement. Wales Online. 16 June 2018

France: “Ex-telecom execs face trial over wave of staff suicides.” CBC News. Global News. BBC News Online.

 India: “Occupational suicides a developing problem.” Thomson Reuters Foundation 21 July 2018

Australia: “Worker bullied by boss took her own life.” NT coroner’s findings. ABC News. Daily Mail. The Australian.

Korea: “Workers told to ‘go home’ as stress takes its toll.” New York Times 4 August 2018

Japan: “Monday mornings off suggestion to address overwork crisis.” The Guardian. The Telegraph. New Zealand Herald 11 August 2018

Britain: “Nurse killed herself after being bullied at work.”

Wales Online. BBC News Online. The Sun. 25 Aug. 2018

Australia: “Emergency workers in suicidal thoughts crisis.” UWA news release 8 December 2018.

“Make or break. Hazards editor Rory O’Neill warns bad jobs are driving us over the edge and says it is time to turn and fight for basic decency, security and rights at work.” Hazards 138, June 2017

“Suicidal work. Your job can drive you to kill yourself, but don’t expect your suicide to be counted in official work fatality statistics or for the boss to end up in court. Leeds University researcher Sarah Waters highlights how the UK is turning a ‘blind eye’ to a major workplace killer.” Hazards 137, March 2017 » Source.

The evidence is poking us in the eye. Question is, are we willing to admit it? More importantly, to do something about it?

So far, this model has managed to:

Call them, if you will, “the unforeseen side effects” of a short-sighted socio-economic model, designed in labs to satisfy the needs of those paying for the research.

And it pays so well that a quarter of the population is on a brink of suicide, the other being medicated for life at the ‘negligible’ costs of 125 billion pounds per year in Britain alone.

It is often the case that we need an outsider to come and help us see the forest from the tree. And so do I, come as a once outsider to this healthcare and socio-economic model with a fresher viewpoint and with a solution; with the only viable solution that would eradicate our problems and help us evolve away from this self-destructive path.

We have to give back people their dignity and to provide them with the tools to develop their unique abilities, to apply their skills for the benefit of all in line with their deep moral values, and no longer with those imposed by bottom lines exclusive interest.

 And we have to stop looking at the problem from the problem’s viewpoint.

The reason I can help people recover in record time from crippling conditions of depression and other psychosomatic conditions is because I never try to treat or to beat the symptom.

I don’t try to hassle with the problem as the current healthcare model does. I don’t even consider it. I take the symptom as a gift, a tool given to the person to find its way back home. A bell meant to awaken them to correct their course of action and priorities.

We cannot beat, much less heal “stress” and its deadly conditions. Stress is a too generic term for a monster with a thousand heads, just as depression and most diagnostics. You try to beat stress at work, you’ll have the stress from home creeping back into the workforce, and vice versa.

We need to take the human as he is: a very complex being, capable of greatness when his deeper fundamental needs are met, and of the worst atrocities when ignored and pushed into despair.

And we need to shift our “after-the-fact” treatment model to prevention! The moment we are looking to treat something, we are already too late!

We need to start educating our children, the parents, the teachers, the whole workforce in a new and organic way, unlike the way we tried so far with the obvious disastrous results.

We have to allow the sages of our times, mentors and educators who have gotten results through their own experiences to teach the others, and no longer rely on scrubbed academic models that look good in theory and fail miserably in practice.

Companies, schools, and hospitals need to have this new model of health and wellbeing mentors on every floor, ready to help when and how help is needed. Not through formal tests and more corporate or academic sterile jargon, but through a truly humane, heartfelt approach. And that, only those who have been through similar situations could provide.

We have asked the human to leave his human feelings at the door when entering the workforce, and the work problems at the door when returning home. In so doing, we have created a split personality disorder in every member of our society, and we are now paying the price! Asking then the employers to mitigate the stress health risks by providing their employees with some extra days off and with topical interventions such as yoga, massages and so on, without changing at core the approach, would be equal to asking an abusive husband to send his wife at the spa to better cope with the stress and abuse he’s causing her.

The truth is, the human is as strong as he is weak; as good as he is bad; as driven as he is lazy. But the human, just like nature, just like life, is a complex process, forever changing, with its own fluctuation; just like the seasons, just like the temperature in a day. Asking him to behave on a preconceived constant will only push him either to implode or to let his rage out on the others.

Either way, until we treat the human humanly, we are no different from the cells in the cases of the immune diseases who have forgotten to be part of the same body, and who are working tirelessly to kill themselves.

© Copyright Gratiela Rosu – Mental Health Specialist & Holistic Performance Coach, Author, Social Innovation Advocate, Founder of the CWS Method®

To book a wellbeing mentoring programme for you or your team, please fill this form describing the issues, the time scale and your available dates for a first video call.

 

If you are a parent or an educator, you will want to read this interactive story book conceived as a wellbeing school programme to help children, educators and parents come together and learn about emotional intelligence. Buy it on Amazon.

You can read more about this new model of healthcare
See other articles about how I helped heal untreatable conditions here
To better understand the mechanisms of stress, see this article.

Seraphinite AcceleratorOptimized by Seraphinite Accelerator
Turns on site high speed to be attractive for people and search engines.