One in five Australian employees are likely to be affected by a mental health condition each year.
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It’s an issue that plagues a number of high-stress professions.
Three young doctors in NSW have died from suicide in less than six months, prompting a national call for answers.
Some of the highest levels of mental health issues occur within the legal, medical and veterinary science professions.
Lawyers
Young Burnie lawyer Alex McKenzie nearly left the profession after struggling to deal with the pressure he put on himself.
“What I wasn’t good at was getting that information about what it was like for my clients emotionally but not taking that on myself,” he said.
Mr McKenzie would start to feel a knot developing in his stomach on a Sunday morning, thinking about work the following day.
When he realised it was causing him to lose sleep and impacting on his capacity to think about and enjoy other things, he decided he needed to change something.
“The real catalyst when I decided I needed to spend some time away from law was when my parents had taken me to Melbourne for the weekend for my birthday and my brother lived in Melbourne and my oldest childhood friends lived in Melbourne, and we were all having dinner for my birthday, so I’m surrounded by my closest family and friends and I still wasn’t enjoying it.
“I was sitting there worrying about work and my capacity to function well at work and perform well at work, and it was just all encompassing sort of worrying.
“I thought, this just has to change so that’s when I decided to spend some time away from law, and that Monday, when I got into Hobart, I went and had the chat with my boss.
“He was great – he’d been really supportive for the preceding few months when I was struggling. I couldn’t have asked for any more support from them.”
Mr McKenzie moved back to the North-West and took on some part-time speech writing and policy work as well as some hospitality work. When he did transition back into the legal profession after taking that break, he didn’t place the same expectations on himself.
“Because I had taken that break, I sort of released myself from the shackles of expectation that I’d placed upon myself.
“It was a really difficult decision to leave because the profession is so small, but then in re-entering it, I didn’t have any expectation on myself.
“I thought, ‘get in there and work hard, learn and see how you go, and if you hate it again, then stop’.
“I knew I didn’t have to do it if it made me unhappy, and it doesn’t. I think what was making me unhappy was the expectation I had on myself – it wasn’t the work.”
Mr McKenzie said getting professional help made a huge difference.
“It releases a bit of that fog when you can get that help from people who know what they’re doing.”
He is now involved with the Tristan Jepson Memorial Foundation, as a national committee member.
The foundation was established in 2008 in memory of Tristan Jepson, a young lawyer who took his own life after suffering years of clinical depression. It’s objective is to decrease work-related psychological illness within the legal community.
Veterinarians
A final year vet student, who is on practical placement in Northern Tasmania, says studying veterinary science is financially, socially and mentally debilitating at times, but has also been rewarding.
She spoke to the Sunday Examiner about the impact her studies have had on her mental health, but asked not to be named.
“I have three friends that quit early on, in our first or second year, and this was due to not being able to cope with the difficulty of the degree in terms of the extensive amount of knowledge and learning required,” she said.
“Veterinary science is a particularly demanding degree with an enormous amount of knowledge to retain, so naturally around exam time I saw high levels of anxiety in various friends. Many, myself included, have had a few bouts of ‘is being a veterinarian really worth it?’.
“You hear a lot of instances of young veterinarians being in practice for a few years but ‘due to high levels of stress’ quit after a short time. Such a high pressure job is likely to affect the mental health of these young vets and make them make rash decisions.”
She said she was concerned about the impact starting out as a young vet might have on her own mental health.
“I am very aware of mental health, as depression is highly prevalent in my family, and whilst I have been lucky now, I know I am susceptible.
“I suspect to be obtaining a job away from home so will not have an enormous support system. I also know that I have other passions in my life that I wish to explore and worry that the stress of being a young veterinarian will make me give up early and pursue another career.”
Doctors
Australian Medical Association Tasmania president Stuart Day said mental health was a growing area of concern for young doctors, particularly in recent months.
“The mental health of our junior doctors training in specialist pathways have particularly been of some concern,” he said.
“Over on the mainland, there have been three suicides in fairly quick succession in those groups.”
Dr Day said the AMA was working “at multiple levels” to address the issue of mental health in young doctors.
“There have been people in the last couple of years who have had significant mental health stresses through their training programs in Tasmania.
He said there was a long history of risk in relation to severe mental health problems and suicide within certain specialty areas of the medical profession, partly because of access to some of their tools.
“That’s been a longer-term issue, but there’s been sort of a recent spike over the last couple of years, and particularly in the last six months, and we’re working to understand why and working on how we can put in the help required.”
‘Don’t think you have to be invincible’
Launceston psychologist Bev Ernst has seen clients from a range of professions over the years with depression and anxiety brought on by work pressures.
Some have even been depressed to the point of feeling suicidal.
One in five Australian workers are likely to be affected by a mental health condition in a 12-month period. And nearly half the country’s 16 to 85-year-olds will experience a mental health condition at some stage in their lifetime.
The economic cost to the country’s workplaces of work-related mental health issues was estimated to be more than $10 billion a year in sick leave and compensation claims.
University of Tasmania this week released a white paper calling for a new integrated approach to better manage mental health in workplaces.
Researchers found that current efforts were largely disconnected, ad hoc, and focused on individual workplaces, rather than on achieving systematic and sustainable change.
The paper was developed by UTAS’s Work, Health and Wellbeing Network in collaboration with national and international researchers, practitioners and policy makers.
It pointed to the need for an integrated approach encompassing three key areas – preventing harm, promoting the positive and responding to illness.
For example, a preventing harm initiative could include developing emotional and social intelligence for leaders and managers.
The paper called for an “evaluation framework” to be established to monitor workplace mental health.
“There is also a need for an overarching national approach to monitoring progress across all employment sectors,” it said.
Ms Ernst said she had seen a number of health workers come through her door, dealing with work stresses.
“It’s workload, it’s shift work,” she said. “The issue for psychologists around self-care is really important as well.
“Also for psychologists and probably doctors and nurses as well, we also have things like we’re exposed to vicarious traumatisation. You can become traumatised by listening to other people’s terrible stories or being exposed to their trauma indirectly.”
Ms Ernst said people should not feel immune, and to seek help if they needed it.
“There’s nothing wrong in seeking help. Accept that we’re just human and we all need help occasionally, and to seek help rather than try to self-diagnose and self-medicate.
“Also, have good peer support - a colleague you can talk to and looking at the whole work-life balance in terms of making sure you manage your day and your week, have time off for leisure activities and family commitments - all the things we tell our clients to do all the time, we’re not very good at doing it ourselves and GPs are not very good at it either.
“Don’t live in a bubble. Don’t think you have to be invincible and have to do everything on your own.”
- If you need help, contact Lifeline on 131 114 or beyondblue on 1300 224 636