Workers have convinced themselves they cannot cope with their daily grind and suffer from stress, according to a leading health expert.
David Wainwright, from the University of Bath, said the phrase ‘work stress’ should be banned, according to a report in the Metro.
In a speech to the Royal Society of Medicine, he outlined how a ‘generational shift’ has made people today far softer than their grandparents. He accepted work could be “challenging”, but said modern-day professionals were too quick to hit the panic button.
Wainwright said people were “actually incredibly resilient” and should toughen up.
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But Neil Shah, director of the Stress Management Society, said it was rubbish to compare people’s lives 60 years ago to modern society. “People don’t switch off, you’re always working, we don’t have any downtime.”
Earlier this week, it emerged that a retired NHS manager has been paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for a stress-related injury after a West Midlands hospital trust “reluctantly” accepted it had no choice but to pay.
