South African professionals are taking huge strain, according to the annual Stress Index, formulated each year by medical insurer Profmed.
This year, the Index, which is based on surveys with professionals, mainly doctors, lawyers, accountants and engineers, found that about 37% of those surveyed are stressed out (up from just above 30% last year), but more than 70% have not sought help or support.
A presentation of the index was hosted last week by television anchor Cathy Mohlahlana, who said: “Many academics are warning us that the next epidemic we will face is to do with mental health. We all have family members, friends or others who are dealing with enormous everyday challenges.”
Profmed CEO Craig Comrie, who presented the findings, said more than a third of respondents were medical professionals and specialists, and that this year, differences in stress levels had shown up because of the pandemic.
“Stress this year is definitely different,” he said. “Everyone has been forced to adapt to the crisis.”
Stress this year is definitely different. Everyone has been forced to adapt to the crisis.
— Profmed CEO Craig Comrie
He said “fear of the unknown” had shown up as the “biggest thing” and that “huge amounts of information had been shared” which had caused the professionals surveyed major anxiety as they had “tried to wade through information” to try to figure out what’s correct and what’s not.
The results showed that apart from the pandemic itself, lockdown had also had a huge effect on public health.
Most affected were people’s “finances, and people’s relationships with family, friends and work colleagues”.
He said a significant increase in mental illnesses among professionals had also resulted from “the isolation that many people feel” and that the jump in stress levels from previous years could basically be attributed to changes in professionals’ lives and livelihoods because of the pandemic.
In 2017, the biggest stress trigger was work. In the next two years, it was finances, but in 2020, it was fear of losing someone close or one’s job or livelihood.
Also, in 2019 60% of those who were stressed used exercise to help overcome this, but this year, because of limitations on outdoor exercise, the percentage dropped to 34.
Half of the professionals said mental health had not been prioritised in their businesses or practices, and 29% said finances had suffered.
Also, 40% had had far more negative thoughts during lockdown, while 45% worried about job security and a third were “overwhelmed by media coverage of Covid-19”, which had added to their stress.
According to Comrie, “many have taken on higher levels of debt to keep their businesses going” and “professionals are not as immune” to financial struggles as “one might imagine”.
Despite these myriad rising levels of stress, 73% of those feeling stressed had not reached out for help.
Pretoria-based psychiatrist and researcher Dr Wilhelmina Erasmus said stress levels had increased because “this is a new situation — something we have never experienced before and it came so suddenly, it didn’t give us time to adjust or prepare”.
She said because pandemics are so rare (the last one of this magnitude was about a century ago), we don’t have much research to go on, but that during the Sars crisis in 2003 and the Mers crisis in 2012, 25% of people never returned to work between three months and four years after the crisis.
“We don’t yet know what will happen with Covid-19,” she said, but the effects will likely be with us for some time.
Global stats are showing that this anxiety among SA professionals, particularly those in the medical profession, is not unique.
A study among professional health-care workers in China showed up to a fifth had suffered anxiety, a quarter were depressed, eight percent had insomnia, and up to half were suffering from “traumatic distress”.
