Work addiction, related to psychiatric disorders
Addictions are often culturally associated with the small pleasures in life that most people The population recognizes as such: sweet or carbohydrate food, Internet use, tobacco (for the smokers), etc.
However, addictive behaviors related to tasks can also occur that not everyone appreciates. Work addiction is one such example.
Work addiction and other associated psychopathologies
Work addiction, or workaholism in English, it may seem positive from a short-term productivity point of view, but it has very negative consequences for health. The fact of dedicating more time than necessary to work causes the rhythms of food and sleep to change and they look much more compressed in schedules, rest hours are scarce and stress levels soar, in addition to impoverishing the social life of the people.
However, a study recently published in PLoS ONElinks work addiction not only to health problems, but also to fatigue and poor diet, and it also does so with the risk of the appearance of symptoms associated with mental disorders.
OCD, depression ADHD ...
The results found show a correlation between work addiction and similarities with symptoms of disorders such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), the depression or the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Thus, workaholics or workaholics have a tendency to present mental disorders in a greater proportion than the population that does not experience this type of addiction.
This research is based on the study of 1,300 people residing in Norway, who filled out a series of questionnaire pages. Each of these volunteers received a score on a choice-based workaholism scale. like "How often in the last year have you worked so hard that your health has suffered from it?". But, in addition, the questionnaire included questions about indicators of certain mental disorders.
The link, or significant correlation, between the presence of workaholism and joint of symptoms associated with mental disorders arose once these data. Specifically, about 8% of the participants showed tendencies to workaholism, and among these people the proportion affected by disorders was much higher.
Specific, 32.7% of the people whose characteristics coincided with those of the workaholic had symptoms associated with ADHD, while for the rest of the volunteers the percentage was 12.7%. 25% of them could present OCD, and 33% stress disorders. As for the proportion of people whose description matched the diagnostic criteria for depression among the workaholics, it was 9%, and 2.6% among the rest of the group of volunteers.
Conclusions and reflections
These results are not so surprising considering how far the effects of work addiction can extend into modern life. With the widespread use of laptops, tablets and smartphones with Internet access, working hours become, each Once again, the hours that were previously dedicated to leisure, and are mixed with housework and personal life outside the office.
New workaholics do not have a clear reference to know when the professional side ends and when the hours dedicated to leisure, rest or family conciliation begin. That is why, if before the addiction to work was limited to the walls of the building in which you work, now these walls have fallen and the The horizon of possibilities for adding hours to work (and subtracting them from private life) has expanded much beyond what is sometimes healthy.
In the light of studies like this we can come to a clear conclusion. The tools and strategies to prevent the appearance to work must bear not only the responsibility of becoming efficient workers in the long term, far from the Burnout syndrome that can cause our productivity to plummet, but more importantly, must preserve our levels of health and well-being.