It’s all an ill wind
Why so many people are off sick while the economy is healthy
Feeling a bit stressed? Pop along to the doctor and explain why you can’t sleep, can’t eat, don’t want to go out and, by the way, a nasty boss at work is making your life hell. Stress, increasingly giving as a reason for being off work, is conveniently hard to diagnose. A recent survey of 67 doctors by Aberdeen University, published in the British Medical Journal, found that most tended to hand out sick notes when asked.
The fact that family doctors, whose main job is to cure illness, have a secondary job of being gatekeepers to the benefit system, goes a long way to explain an odd thing about the British workforce. The employment rate is at a record 74.7% and unemployment is down to 5%, the lowest level since 1974. But record numbers of people – 5.9m – are off sick.
About 3m of the workless sick claim some sickness or disability benefit, mostly incapacity benefit (IB), generally available if for more that four days someone is too sick to work. The numbers claiming IB have risen inexorably to more than 2m.
Industrial injuries, of the sort that used to afflict workers in heavy industry, are on their way out. More and more, people are off for mental or behaviour disorders such as depression: numbers in those categories rose between 1995 and 2003 from 445,000 to 846,000. That is partly because mental illness is no longer considered shameful. Cary Cooper, professor of organisational phychology and health at Lancaster University, also blames economic insecurity and geographical mobility. Moving to find work takes people away from neighbours and relatives who can help them when times are hard. Americans, he says, are used to this. Britons aren’t. They visit their doctors and take to their beds.
Stress is hard to diagnose. Doctors have to get patients to list their symptoms, describe their behaviour, make a diagnosis and work out whether the root of the problem is at work, home, or in something as vague as fear of crime, all within ten minutes, says Mary Church, a Lankarkshire doctor. “We just don’t have time to work through people’s problems, so they are likely to get some quiet sympathy and a sick note.”
Ex.1.7. Translate the following expressions into Russian and get ready to retell the text with their help. You should not look at the expressions while retelling.
to be off sick // to be off for sth (depression) // to take to one’s bed
to feel stressed
to pop along to (the doctor)
to make sb’s life hell
to give as a reason for (being off work)
to be (conviniently) hard to diagnose // to make a diagnosis
to hand out sick notes // to get a sick note
family doctors
the British workforce
the employment/unemployment rate
to be at a record …% // record numbers of (people)
to claim sickness/disability benefit/incapacity benefit
to be on one’s way out
mental or behaviour disorders
to blame sth (economic insecurity and geographical mobility) for sth
hard times (to help sb when times are hard)
to get sb (patiens) to do sth (list symptoms, describe behaviour, etc.)
the root of the problem
all within ten minutes
to work out // to work through
to be likely to get sth
