We can’t let stress eat away at the backbone of society

Workers in both the public and private sectors are struggling to cope, and that’s no good for anyone, says Carol Hunt

‘MOST of us are just three pay cheques away from the street”. That’s the stark warning we used to hear as kids if we stepped over a homeless person or didn’t give sufficient respect to people begging for hostel money. It was a sort of inversion of the Lotto slogan “It could be you!”, reminding us that anyone can hit rock bottom, all it took was three months without income and a few unlucky turns.

We never really believed it though. That sort of abject poverty only happened to other people, sad, unlucky, never-had-a-chance people, not you and me or anyone in our nice, safe, middle-class social circles. Were we naive or what? Last year saw a 25pc increase in the numbers of people made homeless in Ireland. In July this year in Dublin, 39 families lost their homes. Yes, it could be us. Because what’s new and terrifying for the so-called “coping classes” of Ireland, is that we now know that bad luck can hit anyone. Personal and mortgage debt, negative equity, ever more taxes and charges, and hugely diminished salaries have turned us all into bundles of nervous stress.

We keep hearing about the economic recovery, about how growth is expected to remain strong in 2014 and beyond, how the heavy work has been done and there’s light at the end of the tunnel — and we tell ourselves, that’s all very well, but how come it doesn’t feel like that? How is it that, even those of us who have jobs are barely getting from month to month financially? Many don’t even make it to the end without borrowing from family or friends. How is it that we personally know people — people like us! — who have had to seek help from the local St Vincent de Paul, surrender their house, sell their car and every other symbol of middle-class security, in order to ensure that the kids are fed and bills are paid? How is it many of us are working every hour God sends — and then some more — and yet we find that after taxes and biils and debt payments there’s absolutely nothing left in the kitty?

Last week we saw that the cost of “sick leave” in the public sector was twice the level of the private and costs us some €430m a year. That’s a lot of water taxes.

Seemingly the worst offenders include the gardai, teachers and civil servants. Meanwhile over in the private sector, IBEC reported that, while absenteeism rates had fallen, firms were now taking the problem of under-performing workers very seriously, citing people with “personal problems” as having a detrimental effect on productivity. Binge drinking, stress and depression due to financial worries all count as “personal problems” that prevent people doing their job properly, according to a study by Harvard University cited by productivity expert Deirdre Cronnolly.

So if we take both these reports together, we can deduce that the traditional “coping classes” of Ireland, the teachers, guards, civil servants and those working in the private sector, are not “coping” at all. They are self-medicating, binge drinking, stressed-out and increasingly seriously depressed, even suicidal. The only difference is that public sector workers know they can take a certain number of “sick” days per year, without loss of earnings or risk of being let go. So, when they feel too stressed out to go to work, they stay home. In the private sector, people are

‘Leaving the traditional “backbone of society” — the teachers, guards, small businesses and their employees — in debt and despair with little hope of ever emerging from a financial hellhole isn’t really an option for any type of healthy society’

still dragging themselves into work when they clearly aren’t capable of doing the job, but they’re afraid to say they aren’t up to it in case they get rewarded with a P45.

The so-called “personal problems” that seem to be making half the country sick are — to all intents and purposes — a knockon effect of recession and the politics of austerity. Numerous reports have shown that money worries can have a devastating impact on mental and physical health.

Last year, our Behaviour and Attitudes study (with Today FM) showed that 38pc of men and women admitted to feeling “depressed” due to financial stress, 43pc of men believed it had impacted on their physical health while 37pc of women said that money worries had led to arguments between them and their partner.

A study by St Patrick’s University Hospital last year, aptly called “The Mauling of the Celtic Tiger” found that “the number of admissions due to first depressive episodes were higher in recession years 2009-10 than in the prerecession years 2008-9. The study concluded that “These patients with severe depression associated with economic recession had a higher suicide risk but very favourable outcome potential.” No doubt their mental health improves if their financial woes are eased.

And that’s the bottom line here. Absenteeism in the public sector, low productivity in the private; binge drinking, self-medication, stress, depression and even suicide ideation — much of it can be laid at the door of our economic worries.

This, I suggest, is not so much a “personal problem” as a societal one. There need to be far greater efforts made to help people who find themselves continually one pay-cheque away from disaster. Pragmatic debt relief needs to be encouraged more at government level. Leaving the traditional “backbone of society” — the teachers, guards, small businesses and their employees — in debt and despair with little hope of ever emerging from a financial hellhole isn’t really an option for any type of healthy society — certainly not economically. Yet that’s the choice we seem to be making. Why, in God’s name is the sow still eating her farrow?