ENGL 147N Week 5 Assignment; How Health is Affected After Long Work Hours

How Health is Affected After Long Work Hours Student Name English 147NProfessor Berardi Date The idea of work life in a person’s head can come out to a number of things, but the idea of too much work slips a person’s mind most of the time. Working long hours consistently overtime will result in a person’s well-being and mental health to become negatively impacted due to numerous different health factors like sleep deprivation, depression, and many more. The different ways of how long working hours can affect a person’s health continues to add up in every way. While working is something most of us do on a daily basis, it is proven that long hours cause lack of sleep, stress, depression, and so much more that could severely damage the body and mind. These days it is easy to work more than the average 40-50 hours a week with the average person working 70-80 hours a week or more. With these hours there is no time for life outside of work for things such as family, friends, or even a good night’s rest. The idea of working long hours scares most regular working people, while with some it tends to be an advantage. Most people working longer hours find this to be nerve-racking on their personal life and health because of the tremendous amounts of serious affects it could end up causing in regard to mental or physical health. With health being correlated to the workplace, the longer hours that you work tend to end with side effects regarding a harmful health diagnosis. The most common of those health diagnosis’ being a higher risk of stroke. In the article The Combined Effect of Long Working Hours and Low Job Control on Self-Rated Health by multiple authors they stated that the risk of stroke happens to be 1.33 for people who work 55 hours or more compared to those who are working 35 or even 40 hours (Cho, et. al., 2018). Those who have higher risks of a stroke are endangering their lives by trying to make money just to live and to provide. With this article another author has similar stances on the stroke risks that arise from working long hours. In the article titled Go Home on Time! Working Long Hours Increases your Chance of Having a Stroke, the author, Libby Sander states how employees who work longer hours that add up to 40-55 per weeks tend to have a higher risk of stroke than those that work normal hours in a week around 30-40 hours (Sander, 2020). This perfectly shows that the more you work the more at risk you are at damaging your health. Both Sander and Cho bring light to the frightening facts of stroke causes in the workplace all leading to that of long hours being worked by that person. The idea of stroke is a scary thing especially with how deadly one can be. When working long hours can cause major health effects is when someone should worry that they shouldn’t push their hours any further. The talk about how long work hours can impact a person are sought to be negative and there is proof behind that thought. Research has proven this to be true by the use of studies and analyzation. In the article that was previously stated by Cho and numerous other authors in their article they stated, “An increasing number of studies have reported the association between long working hours and negative health outcomes, including sleep deprivation, depression and anxiety disorders, and cardiovascular diseases, especially stroke” (Cho, et. al., 2018). This proves that when an individual works long consecutive hours that it can only lead to one thing: a negative outcome or multiple that are health related. Those health-related issues can cause problems both in the workplace and at home. The more intense the issue may be meaning the more drastic the workplace effect as well as home effect will turn out to be. While for some this may be true and believed, it is not that way for everyone. The workplace tends to drag you in when you are working causing major health-related issues that leads to your mental health compromised. In the article The Negative Impact of Long Working Hours on Mental Health in Young Korean Workers by Park and other authors stated that although it causes more severe side effects it also tends to cause those of more common relation like anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation (Park, et. al., 2020). These issues being very important of course because they involve the fact of life itself. With these types of mental health issues, they change a person’s whole ability to function in any situation. Once one of these types of issues is shown then it all goes downhill from there. No one should ever have to worry about an effect like these when working. Long working hours tends to add up when you contribute so many things into one day. In the article The Effect of Long Working Hours and Overtime on Occupational Health: A Meta-analysis of Evidence from 1998 to 2018 by authors Wong, Chan, and Ngan had stated that adding up your hours for a week that most of it is involved in the main tasks of your job, while also incorporating the hours spent on related tasks, commuting, and travel tends to be too long and detrimental to your health both directly and indirectly (Wong, Chan & Ngan, 2019). When health is impacted indirectly it isn’t noticed as much until it is too late and that of directly is one that is more noticed but is anything ever done to fix that issue is the question still unknown. The arising issues in the workplace each year or week even continues to be discovered and researched. While some believe that working those longer hours is detrimental, some do believe that the positives outweigh the bad. Shown to be an outcome of working long hours can cause negative impacts, it does cause positive feedback for some. In an article The Research is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies, the writer states “In this one, we log too many hours because of a mix of inner drivers, like ambition, machismo, greed, anxiety, guilt, enjoyment, pride, the pull of short-term rewards, a desire to prove we’re important, or an overdeveloped sense of duty” (Carmichael., 2015). This opposes my point due to it being about the drive and positives of working long hours. Ways that the workplace can cause positive effects that aren’t necessarily health related, but more mind driven. The only thing people notice when working long hours is the drive they get when they are “on a roll” or in the zone of their work, which is why some may not see the negative side effects. The boost of self-esteem and self-ambitions can drive an individual to exceed in the workplace in many different ways resulting in tremendous outcomes of rewards. Some may see that working longer hours is rewarding and gratifying for them. When hours tend to be longer, once a drive is met, it is one of the best feelings in the workplace you can reach. Working long hours gives your body a drive to persevere with your work and to complete all the work necessary to feel on top. The article Negative Impacts of Long Working Hours: A Comparative Study Among Nurses the writer Rajan D. stated,