Responsibility of Managers on psychological diseases of their reporting organization

Table of Contents

III. List of Figures

1. Introduction

2. Trend on psychological diseases in the last years
2.1 Facts and Figures on psychological diseases

3. Definition of Management Responsibility in Human Resource Management
3.1 Development of Managers
3.2. Special Responsibilities on psychological disease prevention

4. Conclusion

5. References

List of Figures

Figure 1: Differentiation on sexual background

Figure 2: Manager Profile – Manager Competences

1. Introduction

During the last years and decades, we were undergoing a rapidly changing environment, rather in social or in business. The world is changing much faster, things become more complex and the expectations on handling complex situations and issues are rising. We find ourselves in the situation of the so called “lifelong learning”. Job rotation is not more unusual, it is expected and necessary to show flexibility. Standing still and missing willingness of change acceptance and self-development are career killers. Changing environments and things becoming more complex are both, a challenge and an issue. It hardly depends on the point of view. Due to this fact, the mental pressure on going forward is rising and this results in a high impact on the general health situation of employees. The following assignment will reflect the psychological diseases like depressions or burnout and will show their impact on the business situation nowadays. This will be combined with the responsibility of managers, to recognize first indicators on reporting employees and the special responsibility dealing with psychological diseases.

2. Trend on psychological diseases in the last years

The trend on psychological diseases has become an issue for the health system and also for companies. Based on a report of 2006, which is already 10 years ago, an employee was missing due to illness and diseases 37 calendar days in average. Based on this 37 calendar days per year, 16% where a result of mental or psychological diseases (cf. Gesundheit auf einen Blick – 2009 - Page 11). The total amount of missing working days for the economic region Germany increase from 37 Million days to 60 Million days between 2001 and 2012 (cf. Sicherheit und Gesundheit bei der Arbeit – 2014 - Page 31).

In general, the increasing days of employees missing due to psychological diseases is not only resulted on the fact of increasing employees who are affected. In addition, the mindset has changed a bit during the last years and the acceptance and awareness on psychological diseases has increased, which results in an increasing number of patients for the health system (cf. DAK Gesundheitsreport – 2013 - Page 2). Therefore, more affected people lose their inner barriers to talk about their illness and ask for help on acute and preventive cases of potential or already existing cases of psychological diseases.

2.1 Facts and Figures on psychological diseases

The general trend from the above mentioned part leads us to the detailed facts and figures on psychological diseases. During the past years, there were several campaigns and researching activities to figure out the main reasons of psychological diseases, mainly to create a cluster of the most occurring ones and to create awareness of the impact on personal and economic environment.

Based on a researching report from the technical university of Dresden presented in the year 2012, there is a broad range of diseases occurring in our environment.

In total, 4484 people from the age between 18 years and 79 years participated in the study with a full screening (cf. DEGS psychische Störungen – 2012 - Page 7).

If we take a detailed look into the results of the study, we can see that the three major diseases were anxiety disorders, alcohol disorders and unipolar depressions (cf. ibid. - Page 8). Unipolar depressions are consolidated between dysthymia, major depression with a single period or major depression with a long term period. Depressions are actually on of the diseases which gained a larger acceptance during the last years, as the outing rate and the preventive and scientific research increased in this area. Even some prominent patients talked in a quite open way about this disease.

The study shows that in a 12 month period 33,3 % of the participants were affected from at least one of the diseases, which represents 1/3 of the whole participants.

Switching from the main diseases to a separation between sexual backgrounds, the study shows some facts which have a really high importance on preventive actions. Anxiety disorders occur much more often at women, while alcohol disorders have a much higher rate at men (cf. ibid. - Page 10).

The graphic on the next page shows the general overview about the differences regarding the sexual background of a participant

Figure 1: Differentiation on sexual background

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Source: Own creation, related to DEGS psychische Störungen, 2012, Page 10

If you look closer on the results of the comparison between male and female patients, the graphic shows us that, besides from alcohol disorders, female are much more often affected by psychological diseases then male. Anyways, this graphic has to be interpreted quite carefully, as there is no analysis showing how many potential patients did not participate in the study and would change the view with additional results and facts.

The study also shows that there is a high percentage of so called comorbidity. This means that more than one psychological disease occurs at the same time.

From all participants, more than 1/3 of them were affected by more than one disease at the same time (cf. ibid. - Page 11). Often anxiety disorders and depressions were shown, additionally the combination of anxiety disorders and addiction disorders like alcohol or drug addiction.

In the last part of the study, the already mentioned part of missing working days in relation with psychological diseases is shown. The result of the study provides the fact that 33% of all participants with psychological diseases had at least one missing working day in the last four weeks. This scales up in the fact of multi-morbidity, which means more than three diseases, up between 63% until 88% (cf. ibid. - Page 13).

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