Sandra L. Bloom and Brian Farragher
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195374803
- eISBN:
- 9780199865420
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195374803.003.0003
- Subject:
- Social Work, Health and Mental Health
Most people may not recognize that stress has become a major risk for a wide variety of health and mental health problems, although when surveyed most people talk passionately about the stress they ...
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Most people may not recognize that stress has become a major risk for a wide variety of health and mental health problems, although when surveyed most people talk passionately about the stress they confront at work. Nowhere is that more true than in human services. It is impossible to understand the full impact of the last thirty years of changes in human service delivery without understanding the impact of acute and chronic stress on workers at every level of the system. This chapter reviews what is known so far about the magnitude of stress impacting daily existence with a specific focus on workplace stressors. The issue of workplace stress is a public health problem of enormous proportion, not dissimilar to what existed two hundred years ago before we understood that microbes cause disease, only now the infectious agent is violence in all of its forms.Less
Most people may not recognize that stress has become a major risk for a wide variety of health and mental health problems, although when surveyed most people talk passionately about the stress they confront at work. Nowhere is that more true than in human services. It is impossible to understand the full impact of the last thirty years of changes in human service delivery without understanding the impact of acute and chronic stress on workers at every level of the system. This chapter reviews what is known so far about the magnitude of stress impacting daily existence with a specific focus on workplace stressors. The issue of workplace stress is a public health problem of enormous proportion, not dissimilar to what existed two hundred years ago before we understood that microbes cause disease, only now the infectious agent is violence in all of its forms.
