Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten
A Thought Provoking Take on Mental Health and Work
Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-394-26828-3
Verlag: Wiley
Provides a comprehensive framework for understanding mental health in the workplace
Job Stress Revisited: A Thought Provoking Take on Mental Health and Work offers a critical and much-needed re-evaluation of how job stress is understood, addressed, and managed in modern workplaces. In contrast to popular narratives that individualize stress and recommend surface-level interventions, this resource challenges these assumptions by locating job stress within the very structure and nature of work itself. Drawing on more than a decade of clinical and academic experience, the author underscores how workplace environments and policies—not personal shortcomings—are often the true sources of stress-related mental health issues.
Empowering readers to become informed advocates for lasting change, the book offers a multi-dimensional exploration of job stress, informed by biological, epidemiological, and activity-centered approaches. A structured three-part format builds from foundational concepts to actionable solutions, first clearly defining essential concepts—work, health, and their intersections—before delving into critical issues such as burnout, harassment, toxic workplace dynamics, and substance use. In the final section, Durand-Moreau calls for systemic change, advocating for robust policies, workplace inspections, and structural reform rather than temporary fixes.
A practical guide for those who seek to make work environments healthier and more equitable, Job Stress Revisited: A Thought Provoking Take on Mental Health and Work: - Challenges prevailing wellness narratives by shifting focus from individuals to systemic workplace factors
- Integrates clinical insights from over 400 work-related mental health cases
- Offers a comparative international perspective, especially from Canadian and French occupational health systems
- Combines theoretical analysis with practical case studies to enhance accessibility
- Explores lesser-addressed topics such as doping at work
With vivid case studies and accessible illustrations throughout, Job Stress Revisited: A Thought Provoking Take on Mental Health and Work is essential reading for graduate and professional-level courses such as Occupational Health, Work Psychology, Organizational Behavior, and Public Health Policy. It is ideal for degree programs in Occupational Medicine, Human Resources, Public Health, and Industrial-Organizational Psychology as well as working professionals like union reps, HR, and any worker interested in this topic.
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Weitere Infos & Material
Introduction 5
Part 1 - The Foundations: clarifying what health and work are 10
Chapter 1. What health is 11
Who decides what’s health: patients or experts? 11
Judging workers’ practices and paternalism 13
Demarcy’s workbench at the Citroën car factory 14
“Workers are not morons!” 16
Losing your job: one of the top occupational risks for workers 17
Lift with your legs, not with your back! 18
Chapter 2. Work and employment: is there a difference? 21
Diverging interests between central banks and workers 21
Defining employment is up to statisticians 23
Human relationships between an employer and an employee are biased and unequal 25
Non-standard and precarious forms of employment 26
The poor social support that MLM workers get from their peers 28
The ILO call to transition from the informal to the formal economy 30
Part 2 – The key concepts to understand job stress 32
Chapter 3. A job that makes sense: understanding the concept of activity 33
John’s return to work plan: a successful failure (or a failed success) 33
Real work goes beyond executing a predetermined list of tasks 34
What can make a worker sick may be in the non-visible part of their work 36
The problems of congratulating workers who rushed through extra work 37
Recognizing yourself in what you do is more important than being recognized by others 38
Should work have such a central place in our lives? 39
Chapter 4. What is Job Stress? 43
The General Adaptation Syndrome from Nobel prize loser, Hans Selye 43
Is measuring cortisol levels necessary to assess job stress? 45
Is divorcing more stressful than getting a mortgage? The fascinating world of psychophysics 47
Coping mechanisms and the transactional model from Lazarus and Folkman 49
The job demands – control model from Karasek 51
The effort-reward imbalance model from Siegrist 54
The limitations of questionnaires and job stress quantification in practice 55
Chapter 5. Is burnout a thing? How does work make you sick? 58
Simone Weil’s work-related suicidal ideas as a can factory worker in the 1930’s 58
Why maids can kill their employers? Louis Le Guillant and the Papin Sisters case 60
Claude Veil and the end of the first wave of French psychopathologists 62
Herbert Freudenberger, the overcommitted psychologist who described his own burnout 63
Christina Maslach, the rise and academicization of the concept of burnout 66
Burnout is still an unclear concept 60 years after it has been coined 69
The MBI has psychometrical issues and should not be used for individual assessment 71
PTSD is not the only work-related mental health diagnosis 73
Workers’ compensation of mental health conditions and deaths 75
Chapter 6. Harassment and bullying at the workplace 79
It’s up to a judge to say whether there is harassment (not a physician) 79
Harassment, mobbing, bullying…: the confusion with so many similar concepts 81
Leymann’s mobbing and Hirigoyen’s moral harassment 82
Josiane, the secretary who has seen the Devil in the eyes of her boss 84
Toxic personalities: a simplistic explanation for work-related mental health issues 84
Enlarging the picture: the oriented activity theory 86
Looking at Josiane’s story from the work rather than the interpersonal standpoint 88
The difference between what we know, what we say, and what we do at work 91
Shifting from general averages to precise events with a precise time and location 93
Wrapping up with Josiane’s story: from a “toxic” boss to bad practices and lack of support 95
An argument between a nurse and a surgeon captured by filmmaker Jérôme Le Maire 96
The difficulty of making sense of population data on harassment 99
Chapter 7. Addictive disorders and work-related doping 100
Substance use and addictive behaviors 100
Can work be responsible for substance use? 102
“Alcohol is responsible for 20% of workplace injuries”: really? 103
Looking at substance use at work beyond potential safety risks 105
The three characteristics of a substance: toxicity, effect intensity and addictiveness 107
Doping: using a substance to improve one’s performance 108
Why are people cheating? The Game Theory 110
Lutz’s four type of reasons to use substances at work 111
What about behavioral addictions and work? Gambling and workaholism 112
Daniel, a workaholic sales representative 114
Chapter 8. Psychosocial factors, hazards, and risks 117
How are psychosocial factors and hazards classified? 118
Exhaustivity, objectivity, and questionnaires assessing psychosocial factors 120
Is facing the public a psychosocial hazard? The case of the French employment agency 121
Are security guards and ' zero tolerance policy ' posters preventing psychosocial risks? 123
Psychosocial hazards are not like toxic clouds poisoning workers 124
Part 3 – The solutions: how can we put an end to psychosocial risks in workplaces? 126
Chapter 9. Positive Psychology in Workplaces 127
A new trend that’s not new 127
Positive psychology, capitalism, individualism and ableism 128
A systematic review showing underwhelming evidence 131
The problem of researcher allegiance 133
Chapter 10. What should we do to make workplaces less stressful? 135
What’s the evidence behind interventions on psychosocial risks? 135
The problem with non-hierarchized comprehensive approaches 136
No, it’s not okay not to be okay 139
A growing international normative framework to prevent psychosocial risks 140
Reducing job demands or increasing job resources? 141
The warm fuzzies derived from alcoholism programs: Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) 142
The role of labor inspectors and penalties in the prevention of psychosocial risks 143
An attempt to summarize and recap the types of interventions and their interest 145
Can I blame those who use worker-directed approaches? 149
Conclusion 152
Acknowledgements 154
