Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots

by James Suzman

There is now much more discussion about mental-health issues in the workplace in countries like Britain and the United States. And for good reason if the statistics are anything to go by. In Britain, the Health and Safety Executive reported in 2018 that close to 15 million work days were lost as a result of workplace-related stress, depression, and anxiety, and that among a total workforce of 26.5 million, nearly 600,000 individuals self-reported suffering from work-related mental health issues that year.7 But it is hard to tell from this data whether the reason more mental-health issues in the workplace are diagnosed is because in many countries there is now a trend to pathologize what were once considered to be perfectly normal stresses and anxieties. And one particularly important manifestation of the tendency to pathologize is the now widespread acceptance that “workaholism” is a real, diagnosable condition with potentially fatal consequences.