Stress-related and psychological disorders

Historical Picture 1990’s

The Occupational Health decennial supplement 2004 examines the prevalence and incidence of work-related ill health over a period of approximately a decade from the beginning of the 1990s. The stress chapter includes data from a wide range of relevant, nationally representative UK data sources on stress at work and psychiatric morbidity.

The public profile of work-related stress increased dramatically across the decade as demonstrated by a steep increase in the number of UK national newspaper articles on work stress, and over that time became an issue of public discussion and controversy. This increase in profile is related to the very large changes in working conditions over the same period, including programmes of downsizing and reorganisation, an increase in short-term contracts, outsourcing and the introduction of new technology.

The report shows that self-reporting of work-related stress increased significantly between 1990 and 1999 according to the SWI surveys. However this could partly be due to a shift in attribution, since the ONS Psychiatric Morbidity surveys reveal that overall prevalence of mental ill health changed little between 1993 and 2000. The rate of psychiatric disorder remained consistently higher in the public sector than the private sector, throughout the decade. Towards the end of the decade, self-reporting of work-related stress, depression and anxiety began to level off.