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Stress has skyrocketed in the last few decades.  In California, for example, workers' compensation claims on mental stress-related illnesses have shot up a whopping 700 per cent over the past decade. Stress is the most pervasive and potent toxin in the workplace.

It is believed that somewhere between 75 and 90 per cent of visits to doctors are stress related and high stress also correlates with increasing physical violence in the workplace. Homicide ranks as the second leading cause of workplace death overall and ranks number one for women. Yet organizations claim to thrive on, and at times actively create, stress as a means of promoting organizational effectiveness! In the view of many experts, however, a certain amount of stress may be beneficial but long-term unremitting stress has a costly negative impact on overall quality of life.

Researchers at the University of Michigan found that short term stress boosts the body's ability to fight illnesses. However, prolonged stress weakens the immune system by as much as 60 per cent. What are we doing to ourselves? At the beginning of this new millennium:

42% of all workers feel `used up' by the end of the day.

69% would like to live a more relaxed life.

	Parents spend 40% less time with their children than they did thirty years ago.
	The rise in per capita consumption in the last twenty years is 45%, but the decrease in the quality of life as measured by the Index of Social Health is 51%.

Only 21 % of the young now think that they have a very good chance of achieving The Good Life, compared with 41% twenty years ago.

Workplace stress appears to be the major factor. Insurance industry surveys of US workers have found that over 40 per cent of employees find their jobs very or extremely stressful. Stress differs according to managerial level and gender.

Women and men have different coping styles. When women feel angry, for example, they are more likely to choose to distract themselves from their angry mood rather than to focus on their mood. When women are in a neutral mood, however, they overwhelmingly choose to focus on their emotional state. In contrast, men tend to choose distraction over emotion-focusing, both when they are in an angry mood and when they are in a neutral mood.

The distractions men choose when in a negative mood may often be benign or pleasant, such as exercising. However, men also seem more likely than women to choose maladaptive distractions. In particular, men are more likely than women to use alcohol to cope with stressful events and negative moods. Because men who use alcohol to cope have a heavier alcohol intake and more alcohol-related problems, their tendency to use alcohol to cope may help to explain the higher rate of alcohol-related disorders in men compared to women.

For women, stress is identified as the number-one problem, highlighted as a major concern by an average of 60 per cent over all occupational groups. These figures are as high as 74 per cent for women in their forties in professional and managerial roles and 67 per cent for single mothers. Overwork, impossible schedules, high uncertainty, fear of job loss, economic problems, work-family conflicts  and other contextual factors are important factors across many occupational groups.

At management level, senior women managers report a lack of consultation and communication (while senior men managers found underpromotion to be a major stress source). Further down the seniority level, women's particular stress sources were also gender related: they felt they had to perform better at the job than colleagues of the other sex, they faced a career-related dilemma over whether to start a family, they found their sex a disadvantage in career prospects, and they suffered from office politics.

Men, by comparison, reported fewer sources of stress and those were more closely job related: firing someone, disciplining subordinates and rate of pay were mentioned. Only at the supervisory level do men report more sources of major stress than women, citing long working hours, work overload, staff shortages, equipment failures, unclear career prospects, rate of pay and redundancy threat.

Despite all this, it's been documented that a job involving repetitive tasks with little control or responsibility dramatically increases the risk of dying at a younger age. A 25 year study at the University of Texas confirms that having a satisfying job with a degree of responsibility is good for both physical and mental health. Conversely, those who face few pressures ("pressure" is the same as stress but before it becomes "over-stress") and little control over their jobs are up to 50% more likely to die within 10 years of retiring than those who have had major responsibility.

However it seems that control is just one of a number of factors. Even more significant, in terms of health, is job security. Yet, in this new millennium, most people can expect to have "portfolio careers". Since there is little or no job security, many of us will need to change careers at least once, perhaps two or three times, during our working lives.