A report in industry magazine Health Insurance has highlighted findings by the British Medical Journal that a frightening number of people are off work due to "stress". They sight stress as "conveniently hard to diagnose".
There are a staggering 5.9m people off sick in the UK due to depression and stress rather than physical illness or injury.
Our view
50 years ago nobody had heard of "stress" and people got on with their jobs. In the 50's the UK was a powerhouse! We do not doubt that some people are genuinely ill and need real help. However, if you are unable to cope with your job you should not have the job anyway! Leave or resign. Take another job that is less "stressfull" to you and do not throw a 'sicky' or expect your employer to pay you a salary for doing nothing.
The reason this country is in such a mess is because employment laws are totally biased towards employees, there are many who take advantage of this which means that genuine workers lose out on pay and benefits.
Perhaps if it is the medical professions fault. If you walk into most GP's surgeries and say "I'm stressed out", the first thing blamed is work and you walk out with a two month sick note on full pay. We have to admit this is a very attractive proposition.
No wonder other countries are more productive and have better standards of living.
In fact, we have got ourselves all stressed out by writing this article - we are off home!