Job Stress and Suicide

We live in an increasingly complex world where work weeks seem to be getting longer, not shorter. More and more, people are taking work home and while they don't actually spend 50-60 hours a week in the office, they work that and more at a combination of office and home work. The need to "work smarter, not harder" has gripped us like never before. As I've said before, I don't entirely agree with this new adage.

A newspaper story in Europe is now bringing attention to job stress and how it may factor in to employee suicide. I haven't seen any figures in the US or American newspapers, but a major European newspaper just carried an article about three employees at an innovative auto design plant who killed themselves.

The latest man to take his life did it while his wife and child were away and the woman said her husband was under increasing pressure to perform more and more tasks. He brought work home, couldn't sleep, got up in the middle of the night to complete tasks and was turning into a different person.

Cutting work forces may help the bottom line, but, in the long run, what is the downside?

Related Topics:

• WebMD Video: Killer Stress
• WebMD Video: Success Over Stress

Technorati Tags: stress, suicide, depression, job stress

Anna Nicole and Social Anxiety Disorder

I believe that everyone deserves respect and anyone who can overcome Social Anxiety Disorder to become a celebrity and spokesperson deserves not only our respect, but our understanding. Who among us will cast the first stone at Anna Nicole, a woman who came from humble beginnings and tried to make a place for herself?

Now, information is coming out about Anna Nicole that doesn't zero in on the prescription drugs, the narcotics, the sex and the scandal, but the woman fighting to survive. Mental health professionals know that some people use street drugs or alcohol as a means of "self-medicating" to handle their demons. This would seem to be the case with Anna Nicole. Someone who worked closely with her over the years is talking about her social anxiety in the face of celebrity.

How awful it must have been to be so scared of the press and all the bad publicity that she wouldn't agree to have a physician brought into her room before her death. To die because you are afraid people will say horrible, untrue things about you doesn't seem right in any scenario that I can conjure up.

Neither does it seem right to call anyone "trailer trash." That's plain cruel. The term has been tossed around casually and used as a way of putting people down just because they weren't born into anything but poverty or came from a humble background. Who has the right to make such harsh judgments about people? Listen to who is doing all the talking and wonder where they came from. No one with any sensitivity or ounce of understanding would say something like that to anyone.

What if you were in the middle of all of this and you felt, as Anna Nicole once said, that everything she did resulted in someone suing her? Then you lose a child and still there is no peace from the relentless photographers? You are a prisoner in your own home? How do you go on? Drugs become more and more attractive. Consider the TV journalist who asked another, on camera, "Is Anna Nicole still dead?" Tasteless.

Remember about that first stone and before anyone tosses it, think about yourself. I don't think many of us could jump out of the way of this bus.

Related Topics:

• WebMD Video: Too Scared: Tale of Social Anxiety Disorder
• WebMD Video: Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Technorati Tags: Anna Nicole, Anna Nicole Smith, social anxiety, celebrity, emotional health, addiction

The Stress of Being Anna Nicole

The sudden death of celebrity Anna Nicole Smith in Florida was another unforeseen event in this woman's life. Now, she is dead after what appeared to be a short illness with flu-like symptoms, according to news reports. But what of the other things happening in her life and how may they have affected her?

Medical experts are weighing in on all the causes that need to be ruled out and one has definitively indicated that stress couldn't have killed her. I am not a medical expert, but I would take exception that such a strong statement ruling out stress as a contributing factor in her death.

Consider for a moment that this was a woman who had a history of multiple medical procedures, had taken many prescription and non-prescription medications and had lost a lot of weight over eight months or so. Together, all of these factors may have weakened her ability to tolerate an inordinate amount of stress.

The stressors in her life were many. She had lost her husband, was involved in protracted legal battles over her rights as a surviving spouse, was named in a high-profile court case for a diet product, had recently had a baby by Caesarean, her son had died suddenly (in her hospital room where she had just had the baby) and paternity for her child was being contested. How can anyone say that that amount of stress didn't contribute to possible pre-existing conditions?

Stress weakens the immune system, raises blood pressure, contributes to cardiac problems and may even cause other problems. We don't know everything about stress' effects.

I was saddened when I heard of her death because I felt she was a woman caught in the eye of a storm of publicity where she had little control. Now, her little daughter is left in yet more battles over who will care for her and who will try to make up for the loss of her mother. Anyone remember the "Poor Little Rich Girl" case in the 20s-30s? Look it up.

Related Topics:

• Stress Disorder More Common in Women
• Post-Traumatic Stress Ups Heart Disease

Technorati Tags: anna nicole smith, news, stress

The Astronaut Love Triangle

No one is immune from experiencing some type of mental disorder or distortion of reality, and the recent news about astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak is proof once again of that well-known fact in psychiatry/psychology. The mother of three and Navy captain flew on a space shuttle mission just this past July and today she wears another symbol of high tech -- a GPS ankle bracelet. How did it happen, everyone must be asking. How could this woman now face kidnapping and attempted murder charges?

How could a highly successful, bright, career-track woman end up in a Florida parking lot with tools to kidnap and perhaps kill her "love rival" for the affection of another astronaut, a shuttle captain, U.S. Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman? The photos seem to tell the story of a woman who has undergone a dramatic change in appearance, and I'm left wondering what contributed to that change in body and mind.

It wouldn't be ethical for me to try to diagnose anyone from afar, but I can look at some of the details now coming out and offer some thoughts on what might have happened.

When the police searched Captain Nowak's car, they found a steel mallet, a folding knife, rubber tubing, rubber gloves, money, and love letters. This would seem to indicate that some thought went into her actions. The popular notion has always been that someone suffering from any type of mental incapacity is incapable of planning a detailed crime. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Individuals who have distorted reality testing can very well plan and carry out an action. This does nothing to speak to their mental state. They may not have the ability to think clearly regarding situations in their lives, but they do retain the ability to carry out a plan. The main problem here remains that they appear to be lucid rather than in a state of diminished capacity.

If I were to speculate on the lives of astronauts in general, I'd think that they must be under tremendous pressure and are highly motivated individuals as well. However, that need to achieve and succeed can also play a role in any area of their lives and this may be what happens when perception becomes distortion.

We know of cases of individuals who believe that a person in a position of authority loves them and is sending signals of some sort to them. These persons can do rather bizarre and dangerous things such as climbing fences at official residences, straying onto guarded areas, and entering homes via windows to see the beloved. I'm not saying that's the case here, but it points to one possibility.

The details will come out in time and our thoughts must be not only with this highly accomplished woman, but the three children who are victims, too.


Technorati Tags: Lisa Ann Nowak, NASA, astronaut, kidnapping

Binge Eating Now Recognized

When I suggested to my dissertation committee almost 20 years ago that I wanted to do research on binge eating in women over 30, they told me that I really meant bulimia. No, I insisted, I wanted to do a study of binge eating and stress, not bulimia. I had to keep making this case over and over again as each member and many of the professionals with whom I consulted told me that there was no such thing as a problem with binge eating that needed to be studied. I should study bulimia, they suggested. I stuck to my resolve to study binge eating and I found it in about half of the 512 women who returned research materials to me.

The oldest woman in my study was 74 and she was a binge eater. There was no particular characteristic of the binge eater except that she seemed to do it when stressed. Many of the women in my study were professionals, some were nurses, physicians, teachers, doctoral students and all of them were over 30.

The point I wanted to make was that disorders of eating were found in more than the adolescents and college women that everyone was studying. I also felt, although I didn't include that in my study, that it had nothing to do with body image or following the crowd. I was right and now a much larger and more impressive study has found that, indeed, binge eating is a problem.

Binge eating is now considered a disorder and the researchers from McLean Hospital indicated that it is "the most common eating disorder." They found that binge eating is more prevalent than bulimia or anorexia nervosa and is linked to severe obesity. Not only is it more prevalent, it lasts longer than either of the other two disorders; around 8.1 years while anorexia lasts about 1.7 years. Of the sample of 9,282 people that they used for data analysis, 3.5 per cent of women and 2 per cent of men suffered from binge eating disorder.

The conclusions of the researchers, too, were that there was poor understanding of the disorder and suggested that "health experts take notice of these findings."

I'm sorry it took so long for me to be right on this one, but I was and that was almost 20 years ago.

Related Topics:

• Emotional Needs Can Prompt Emotional Eating
• Stressed? Watch Out For Binge Behavior

Technorati Tags: eating disorders, binge eating, stress, anxiety