Under Pressure…

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A new study using the data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, in particular some 21,859 folks employed over the age of 18 was just completed. “Anxious? Depressed? You might be suffering from capitalism: contradictory class locations and the prevalence of depression and anxiety in the USA”  was published in Sociology of Health & Illness,  with Drs. Seth Prins, Lisa Bates, and Katherine Keys (Columbia University), along with Dr. Carles Muntaner (U of Toronto) serving as the authors.

The researchers pigeonholed folks into one of four groups. Capitalists, Middle Managers (further divided into managers and supervisors), and Worker Bees. (Obviously, these researchers had the same philosophy that obtained in my yeshiva years ago when they divided our grade into a smart class and a dumb class- and you needed a 120 IQ to be in the dumb class!)

Who gets depressed or anxiety?

The folks who owned companies, earning more than $ 71,500 a year, were termed capitalists. (These folks clearly were in the top 10% of earners in the US.)  The ‘managers’ was the term used for those in executive, administrative, or managerial positions; these folks had completed a four year college program (which meant they earned a Bachelors degree). Had they not completed college, the folks, in those same positions, were classified as supervisors. The worker bees were salepersons, techies, farmers, and cops, all not in the above classifications.

Once the subjects were classified, the real work began. The researchers discerned who experienced anxiety or depression over the past 12 months- and guestimated their chances of developing these maladies over their lifetime. The researchers had doubts about those previous studies that claimed that income and education (socioeconomic factors) determined whether one would experience anxiety or depression; their working hypothesis was that social class and power in the workforce were the more important factors. To complete their analysis, they needed to control for factors (that means render them moot) like age, geographical location, and gender.

Lo and behold, the manager/supervisors- middle management- “won” the race. These folks were most likely to experience both depression and anxiety.

Almost 1/5 (19%) of the supervisors and 1/6 (16%) of the managers experienced depression while that same census category was 1/8 (12%) for the worker bees and 1/9 (11%) for the capitalists.

But, anxiety was the bigger discriminating malady. In this case, 1/50 (2%) of the capitalists and 1/20 (5%) of the worker bees were affected. Yet, 1 of every 9 (11%) supervisors and 1 in 14 (7%) of the managers experienced anxiety.

This shouldn’t surprise you. Most middle management experiences a separation (or “alienation”) from labor and production in the workplace. And, that often leads to feelings of powerlessness. Since they are not at the top of the pyramid (who would be the “capitalists”), they don’t always see the complete results and may not have full access to corporate resources, their powerlessness feelings are not abated. Moreover, this is the same group that has felt the most “pressure” since the 2008 downturn, where they are being forced to do more with less. You can bet there will be many more studies along these lines- examining the politico-economic factors that obtain in the modern (exploitative- that is the scientific, not pejorative, term employed) corporate structures.

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