Male
workers are more likely to fall prey to musculoskeletal disorders than women,
and both sexes are just as susceptible to stress, anxiety or depression,
according to a study by the Health and Safety Executive.
Findings
from the report Self-reported Work-related Illness in 2001/02 – Results of a
Household Survey were published last December and the HSE’s full results
include:
–
Men (who have worked) carry a higher prevalence rate of musculoskeletal
disorders (3 per cent) than women (2.2 per cent). Rates of stress, depression
or anxiety are the same for both sexes.
–
Prevalence rates for stress, anxiety and depression are higher among workers
than among the self-employed (1.4 per cent of employees and 0.8 per cent of the
self-employed). But the opposite is true of musculoskeletal disorders.
Full-time workers are more prevalent than part-timers to work-related
musculoskeletal disorders, stress, depression and anxiety.
The
study of 5,015 people finds:
–
Occupations with above average work-related illness rates include the
protective services (such as the police, fire service, prison service and armed
forces), with an estimated rate of about 8.6 per cent. Health & social
welfare professionals, skilled construction and building trades and teaching
and research professionals rate about 7 per cent.
–
Health & social welfare, and teaching and research also carried
above-average rates, and protective service occupations and health & social
welfare professionals had above average annual days lost per worker.
–
Industries carrying the highest average days lost per worker were extractive
and utility supply industries, public administration and defence and health
& social work.
–
Industries carrying the high prevalence rates of musculoskeletal disorders were
agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing, with a rate of about 3.8 per cent,
construction (3.6 per cent), health & social work (2.8 per cent) and
manufacturing (2.3 per cent).
–
Teaching and research carried the highest prevalence rates of stress,
depression or anxiety as a whole, at around 3.7 per cent, closely followed by
protective service occupations with a rate between 2.1 and 4.9 per cent.
Along
with health & social welfare professionals (2 per cent) and business and public
service professionals (1.7 per cent), these groups accounted for around half
the prevalent cases of self-reported work-related stress, depression or
anxiety.
The
original headline statistics indicated an estimated prevalence of
self-reported, work-related illness in 2001-2002 was 2.3 million – 5.3 per cent
of the population who have ever been employed.
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The
estimated number of working days lost because of work-related illness during
the 12 months was 33 million, with each person taking an estimated average of
23 days off work.
