Stress


The TUC’s biennial survey, based on responses from over 1,000 trade union safety reps, consisently identifies stress as one of their top health and safety concerns. In October 2017, the general union GMB reported that frontline ambulance workers were in the midst of a stress and anxiety epidemic. Reponses to the union’s Freedom of Information requests by ambulance trusts in England revealed that one in eight (12%) of paramedics and ambulance health care assistants were forced to take a total of more than 80,000 sick days due to stress and anxiety the previous year. 


More recently, a Mental Health Foundation charity survey found that in the year to May 2018, almost three-quarters (74%) of people have at some point felt so stressed they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope. The results of the YouGov survey, which polled more than 4,000 adults in the UK in 2018, are published in the Stress: are we coping? report. The foundation calls on the government and Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to ensure employers treat physical and psychological hazards in the workplace equally and help employers to recognise and address psychological hazards in the workplace under existing legislation.