The diseases caused by work-related stress are the second commonest group of occupational illness in Great Britain. Every year, half a million workers (2% of the entire workforce) suffer from a condition which they believe to have been caused by stress at work. As a result, along with musculoskeletal disorders, slips and trips, falls from height and workplace transport, stressis one of the top five priority hazards which the Health and Safety Commission is addressing. Surveys by unions show that stress is the issue of greatest concern to workplace union safety representatives, surveys by employers show that stress is the main work-related cause of sickness absence, and research by the Health and Safety Executive shows that one in five workers (five million of them) experience harmful levels of stress on a fairly regular basis, with public servants experiencing the highest levels of all. And yet stress is one of the most contentious issues in the British health and safety field, with court cases for compensation hotly contested, experts divided over the causes, its measurement and, in the most extreme cases, a raging debate about whether “stress” is a meaningful concept at all.

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