Published 27 May 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2099
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b2099

Letters

Stress and mental health

The NHS elephant in the room

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Iversen and colleagues cover the biological and psychological aspects of handling stress but not the social context where stress occurs.1 The elephant in the room is the NHS.

The NHS has become a psychological toxin. Agendas are set centrally and doctors have become detached from the leadership of the organisation. Doctors feel out of control in an organisation that is focused on short term matters to quieten the public and the media. The purpose of the NHS seems to have become as confused as anything else the government touches. Indeed the behaviour of NHS leaders and their political organ grinders has more than a little in common with the short termism so roundly denounced in financial institutions.

The Maslach burnout inventory, the standard research tool in measuring stress, identifies burnout as the result of a mismatch between expectations and reality in demands, control, reward, community, fairness, and values. These characteristics . . . [Full text of this article]

John Sharkey, consultant psychiatrist in occupational health1

1 Independent sector, Northern Ireland

yekrahsj@gmail.com


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Relevant Article

How to handle stress and look after your mental health
Amy Iversen, Bruno Rushforth, and Kirsty Forrest
BMJ 2009 338: b1368. [Extract] [Full Text]

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