15 ms·

Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Spread Through Employee Mobility (2022)

205 points by Luc 4y ago

nitwit005 4y ago
> The effects are particularly strong for newcomers hired into managerial positions and newcomers with long previous tenures in unhealthy organizations. If it was raw exposure to stressed/anxious people that was the issue, you wouldn't expect this. They're probably just measuring problem people moving between organizations. Someone had to make the unhealthy organization unhealthy in the first place, and that person was probably a manager or long time employee.
jimnotgym 4y ago
I suppose if I were trying to keep an epidemic out of my company if might extend the analogy with some of the following methods. Screening and monitoring: watching new hires to see if they exhibit toxic or negative behaviours Treatment: Help employees to get better treatment, both for personal issues, but also for negative learnt behaviours.
ChewFarceSkunk 4y ago
[dead]
neilv 4y ago
Is Cloudflare blocking anyone else's Firefox from accessing this (even with all add-ons and built-in Enhanced Tracking Protection disabled)?
neilv 4y ago
You don't even have to be at a place to catch it from there. Just the other week, I was talking with a colleague who was in a depressing and stressful work situation, at another company where I've never been. Hours later, I had an interview (elsewhere), and my brain was in a cautious-of-problems mode, and not the more appropriate excited-about-new-possibilities mode. Afterwards, I realized it was reflected in questions I asked, voice tone, etc., and then realized why. :)
sterasody 4y ago
I wonder if it is as easy as not hiring someone from other organization to prevent mental disease in your own. What is the cause of the unhealthy behavior in the first place? As opposed to social contagion, what is the origin?
- rawgabbit 4y ago
  What is the cause of the unhealthy behavior in the first place? Combination of culture and personal choice. e.g., A culture where it is permissible to take advantage of others as they are not as equal as your are. A personal choice to take advantage/abuse others as long as you get yours, screw everyone else.
whatshisface 4y ago
>Our findings reveal that when organizations hire employees from other, unhealthy organizations (those with a high prevalence of mental disorders), they “implant” depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders into their workforces. Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis of a mental disorder. The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position. The study sounds like it is trying to blame the problem on the suffers (the "contagion" of their depression), but the obvious explanation of this is that by hiring from organizations with high stress, you're likely to be hiring perpetrators. That explains why it is not more likely to happen when the individual being hired is diagnosed ("Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis"), and also why it is more likely to happen when they enter a position of power ("The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position."). I am also not sure if the social contagion model has a lot of evidence for it. If you apply epidemiological models to any data you will get fits for epidemiological model parameters, and those will have a built-in epidemiological interpretation - but without prior knowledge that mental disorders are contagious (I thought most were definitely not?) you would just be making blind nonlinear curve fits to generic functions with many possible explanations.
- eru 4y ago
  I don't know whether your model is accurate, but it's plausible enough that the paper should address it.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > but the obvious explanation of this is that by hiring from organizations with high stress, you're likely to be hiring perpetrators. Only if you're importing their managers. Managers focused on MBA crap are bad enough for corporate culture, but those raised in corporate fiefdoms are even worse. When half of their time is wasted on fighting petty fights with other managers instead of working together with them, they waste the time of those below them as well.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
alana314 4y ago
Interesting but I hope the takeaway isn't demonizing folks that are depressed or anxious, or having a thought-police toxic positivity style company culture.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  I think any company who uses this study as hiring criteria is or will become one of the companies causing the problems.
- 77pt77 4y ago
  Everyone with a bit of life experience can tell that that's exactly what's happening here.
- maximinus_thrax 4y ago
  Lots of companies are already doing this, with or without this study.
- thuridas 4y ago
  Let's don't blame people but the toxic learnt behaviors.
thenerdhead 4y ago
Is there a simplified term for this similar to Conway’s Law? Wouldn’t the mental health reflect the organization and its communication style?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwaway8689 4y ago
Need to do this study across a couple of economic cycles because the last few years have been atypical for both stress and hiring patterns. It reads like Denmark has linked employment and health data so I guess they can do so for as far back as the records go.
- itronitron 4y ago
  Yeah, I wonder if the study is GDPR compliant.
ebiester 4y ago
I absolutely have noticed. In interviews, people coming from difficult and stressful positions absolutely radiate this in their interviews! I know that I will feel emotionally drained after an interview with such people. Further, I have explicitly worked to de-condition survival behaviors in negative organizations with new employees multiple times, and it wouldn't surprise me that these sorts of behaviors could be "contagious" in other organizations.
- azornathogron 4y ago
  This sounds interesting! If you have time, could you share an example or two? What survival behaviours are you talking about, and what kinds of things do you do to decondition these behaviours?
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Seeing the discussion here, we're talking about "psychological safety": https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/what-is-psychological-safety-at-work/ https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/wh...
  - serpix 4y ago
    my personal experience as a consultant has been outright fear of touching the production servers. Fear as in actual fear response such as nervousness, agitation, facial expressions. Other examples would be fear of altering any deeper parts of the system due to fear of punishment or war room style crisis.
    - candiddevmike 4y ago
      What's wrong with having a healthy fear of touching production servers? Fear of production is a sign that person has been through some shit and is probably more careful, in my experience. Touching production is a lot like being an electrician working on a live circuit.
      - 4y ago
mistrial9 4y ago
fifteen years ago in California Bay Area, when experienced programmers showed up a the door of pre-funded companies, and especially as phones with ads became a huge revenue source, one internal Human Resources message was "do not hire anyone that does not have a job already." This conveniently included those who had their own small business or side-gig priors, as well as those that did not work well enough with teams, and those newly graduated without work experience. As the raw number of humans with some applicable skills increase world wide, and the disconnect between pre-funded wealthy environments and others increases, new invisible "flags" likely can be applied. Not to defend the way business is done in China, but I have heard that when they assembled teams for an important new company, they often did not do as the West has done and cast infinitely large hiring nets with infinitely more nuanced and rare characteristics, rather in China the rumor is that they just used who they could find with a reasonable search, and got on with it.. Lastly, it is ironic that the divisive, command and control environments found in long-term stable business, are actually very negative to creative and open-minded people who want to try things.. Yet these "rules" might favor those in the stable business world, bringing all the anti-communication and top-down culture from there. odd times
- itronitron 4y ago
  The near term financial security of people making hiring decisions is dependent on the opinion of only a select few people. Command and control depends on division.
oofta-boofta 4y ago
>Our findings reveal that when organizations hire employees from other, unhealthy organizations (those with a high prevalence of mental disorders), they “implant” depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders into their workforces. Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis of a mental disorder. The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position. This sounds sort of like victim blaming to me. I've worked in a couple of bad environments and felt outright relief when I was able to go somewhere much better. The answer is to do away with toxic work environments, not blame the person who suffered under them.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  The point of the paper is that there's more to it than that.
  - oofta-boofta 4y ago
    "Did you see what she was wearing?"
    - mgraczyk 4y ago
      A better analogy would be if you were hiring rapists at your company and it turned out that they had themselves been victims of sexual assault, then you may want to know what's going on. Your analogy is completely missing the entire point made in the paper, which is that an epidemic model applies in this case.
armatav 4y ago
Be very careful who you waste your time working for. So many companies are cesspools of mental trauma that are very inviting places for the unaware, and if you’re not strong of mind you get to subconsciously carry their issues with you for a long time after.
- Mistletoe 4y ago
  The original meaning of meme from Richard Dawkins was a mind virus and people still aren’t understanding how damaging and transmissible unhealthy ones are. This paper is a perfect example of them occurring in the real world.
kj4211cash 4y ago
This is why it's important to shame Amazon and other workplaces with ludicrous cultures that damage their tech employees mental health.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  Is shaming did anything that would be true. But it doesn't. What we need is actual action politically.
- closeparen 4y ago
  Ex-Amazons are valued in Silicon Valley explicitly for the hard edge that being socialized there is supposed to have imparted.
  - dudul 4y ago
    I'm not in the valley, but honestly I discard all resumes from former Amazon employees. If the tenure is shorter than 1 year I may take a look, just in case. As a manager there is no way I'm contaminating my team with Amazon's culture. And yeah yeah "not all former Amazon blabla". Sure, I dont have time to play the odds. We all know about Amazon's toxic culture.
t344344 4y ago
In my old job I had to fake depression. I lived nice bachelor life, some coworkers were jealous and toxic. I lied that my gf left me. I nuked my social media and started posting cats for adoption...Latter got new girlfriend, 10 years older with two kids... Work become easier. No stress and much less unpaid overtime. Workplace culture influences people a lot.
- nevertoolate 4y ago
  Fake it till you make it?
  - nitin87 4y ago
    good quote .
- theonething 4y ago
  I'm unclear about the posting cats for adoption part. How does that relate to faking depression? Feigning that you were so depressed you couldn't take care of your cats?
  - projektfu 4y ago
    If you spend a lot of time around the rescue community you'll understand this. There are a lot of people coping with depression and anxiety there.
  - postsantum 4y ago
    The new girlfriend made him post the cats. Shows the colleagues OP is broken into submission
l_theanine 4y ago
I’ve been reading about microbiomes and things like that over the past year, and I suspect there’s a biological aspect to a lot of mental health issues in workplaces. Certainly the pandemic has renewed public interest in it, but I think to put it in caveman terms: sick people leave sick germs where they go. I haven’t read this paper yet, but it looks pretty cool so far. The abstract certainly makes it seem worth the read. We seem to think ourselves as further removed from meatspace than we really are. We’re a lot more like colonies of ants, I think. What attacks the ant, attacks the colony.
- perrygeo 4y ago
  > there's a biological aspect to a lot of mental health issues in workplaces how do you explain the same phenomenon occurring in remote workplaces? I agree there's a biological aspect to it. But it's clearly "contagious" over the internet and thus by human communication, not germs.
  - l_theanine 4y ago
    Oh well I didn’t say I thought it was mutually exclusive. Germs aren’t the only part of working a shit job. Whether it’s in person, over a video call, or over email, if your supervisor is a dickhead then your team will be unhappy. I was thinking primarily about people who work indoors, in rooms with poor circulation. I’d wager those people are sicker more often, unwell more often, and obese more often. That’s all I meant.
itronitron 4y ago
[flagged]
- coldtea 4y ago
  Sounds like one of the best things to research and publish in order to help people. And, oh my god, this comment sounds like "just let sleeping dogs lie"...
  - dschuetz 4y ago
    Usually this goes like "don't hire the spreaders, and get rid of those who are already employed". It is very difficult and costly to actually help people, compared to make it not your problem - that's capitalism for ya. That study reeks of corporate consulting and management. And it's out there now, research is going on about this.
Blackthorn 4y ago
Great, as if there wasn't enough just world fallacy bs over layoffs, now those people have to deal with this too.
neuroma 4y ago
Reminds me of how Psychiatrists have one if the highest suicide rates of all professions. Seems unusual; like an accountant who's insolvent, or a mechanics who's car always breaks down.
- watwut 4y ago
  I tried to google it and no list of top professions for suicide contained psychiatrists.
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  Nah, I'm a computer guy who's computers are never put together fully, as I don't want to mess with it when I get home. Happens all the time. Well, that's my desktop. My servers get TLC.
snitzr 4y ago
Social contagion happens in families as well.
coding123 4y ago
If not remote, it may be gut bugs.
Animats 4y ago
Does sociopathy spread, too? That's more of a problem to an organization. "The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position" is a huge concern if the new manager has sociopathic tendencies.

205 points by Luc 4y ago

> The effects are particularly strong for newcomers hired into managerial positions and newcomers with long previous tenures in unhealthy organizations. If it was raw exposure to stressed/anxious people that was the issue, you wouldn't expect this. They're probably just measuring problem people moving between organizations. Someone had to make the unhealthy organization unhealthy in the first place, and that person was probably a manager or long time employee.

jimnotgym 4y ago

I suppose if I were trying to keep an epidemic out of my company if might extend the analogy with some of the following methods. Screening and monitoring: watching new hires to see if they exhibit toxic or negative behaviours Treatment: Help employees to get better treatment, both for personal issues, but also for negative learnt behaviours.

ChewFarceSkunk 4y ago

[dead]

neilv 4y ago

Is Cloudflare blocking anyone else's Firefox from accessing this (even with all add-ons and built-in Enhanced Tracking Protection disabled)?

neilv 4y ago

You don't even have to be at a place to catch it from there. Just the other week, I was talking with a colleague who was in a depressing and stressful work situation, at another company where I've never been. Hours later, I had an interview (elsewhere), and my brain was in a cautious-of-problems mode, and not the more appropriate excited-about-new-possibilities mode. Afterwards, I realized it was reflected in questions I asked, voice tone, etc., and then realized why. :)

sterasody 4y ago

I wonder if it is as easy as not hiring someone from other organization to prevent mental disease in your own. What is the cause of the unhealthy behavior in the first place? As opposed to social contagion, what is the origin?

rawgabbit 4y ago
What is the cause of the unhealthy behavior in the first place? Combination of culture and personal choice. e.g., A culture where it is permissible to take advantage of others as they are not as equal as your are. A personal choice to take advantage/abuse others as long as you get yours, screw everyone else.

whatshisface 4y ago

>Our findings reveal that when organizations hire employees from other, unhealthy organizations (those with a high prevalence of mental disorders), they “implant” depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders into their workforces. Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis of a mental disorder. The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position. The study sounds like it is trying to blame the problem on the suffers (the "contagion" of their depression), but the obvious explanation of this is that by hiring from organizations with high stress, you're likely to be hiring perpetrators. That explains why it is not more likely to happen when the individual being hired is diagnosed ("Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis"), and also why it is more likely to happen when they enter a position of power ("The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position."). I am also not sure if the social contagion model has a lot of evidence for it. If you apply epidemiological models to any data you will get fits for epidemiological model parameters, and those will have a built-in epidemiological interpretation - but without prior knowledge that mental disorders are contagious (I thought most were definitely not?) you would just be making blind nonlinear curve fits to generic functions with many possible explanations.

eru 4y ago
I don't know whether your model is accurate, but it's plausible enough that the paper should address it.
mschuster91 4y ago
> but the obvious explanation of this is that by hiring from organizations with high stress, you're likely to be hiring perpetrators. Only if you're importing their managers. Managers focused on MBA crap are bad enough for corporate culture, but those raised in corporate fiefdoms are even worse. When half of their time is wasted on fighting petty fights with other managers instead of working together with them, they waste the time of those below them as well.
PuppyTailWags 4y ago

alana314 4y ago

Interesting but I hope the takeaway isn't demonizing folks that are depressed or anxious, or having a thought-police toxic positivity style company culture.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kayodelycaon 4y ago
I think any company who uses this study as hiring criteria is or will become one of the companies causing the problems.
77pt77 4y ago
Everyone with a bit of life experience can tell that that's exactly what's happening here.
maximinus_thrax 4y ago
Lots of companies are already doing this, with or without this study.
thuridas 4y ago
Let's don't blame people but the toxic learnt behaviors.

thenerdhead 4y ago

Is there a simplified term for this similar to Conway’s Law? Wouldn’t the mental health reflect the organization and its communication style?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

throwaway8689 4y ago

Need to do this study across a couple of economic cycles because the last few years have been atypical for both stress and hiring patterns. It reads like Denmark has linked employment and health data so I guess they can do so for as far back as the records go.

itronitron 4y ago
Yeah, I wonder if the study is GDPR compliant.

ebiester 4y ago

I absolutely have noticed. In interviews, people coming from difficult and stressful positions absolutely radiate this in their interviews! I know that I will feel emotionally drained after an interview with such people. Further, I have explicitly worked to de-condition survival behaviors in negative organizations with new employees multiple times, and it wouldn't surprise me that these sorts of behaviors could be "contagious" in other organizations.

azornathogron 4y ago
This sounds interesting! If you have time, could you share an example or two? What survival behaviours are you talking about, and what kinds of things do you do to decondition these behaviours?
- pjc50 4y ago
  Seeing the discussion here, we're talking about "psychological safety": https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/what-is-psychological-safety-at-work/ https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/wh...
- serpix 4y ago
  my personal experience as a consultant has been outright fear of touching the production servers. Fear as in actual fear response such as nervousness, agitation, facial expressions. Other examples would be fear of altering any deeper parts of the system due to fear of punishment or war room style crisis.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    What's wrong with having a healthy fear of touching production servers? Fear of production is a sign that person has been through some shit and is probably more careful, in my experience. Touching production is a lot like being an electrician working on a live circuit.
    - 4y ago

mistrial9 4y ago

fifteen years ago in California Bay Area, when experienced programmers showed up a the door of pre-funded companies, and especially as phones with ads became a huge revenue source, one internal Human Resources message was "do not hire anyone that does not have a job already." This conveniently included those who had their own small business or side-gig priors, as well as those that did not work well enough with teams, and those newly graduated without work experience. As the raw number of humans with some applicable skills increase world wide, and the disconnect between pre-funded wealthy environments and others increases, new invisible "flags" likely can be applied. Not to defend the way business is done in China, but I have heard that when they assembled teams for an important new company, they often did not do as the West has done and cast infinitely large hiring nets with infinitely more nuanced and rare characteristics, rather in China the rumor is that they just used who they could find with a reasonable search, and got on with it.. Lastly, it is ironic that the divisive, command and control environments found in long-term stable business, are actually very negative to creative and open-minded people who want to try things.. Yet these "rules" might favor those in the stable business world, bringing all the anti-communication and top-down culture from there. odd times

itronitron 4y ago
The near term financial security of people making hiring decisions is dependent on the opinion of only a select few people. Command and control depends on division.

oofta-boofta 4y ago

mgraczyk 4y ago
The point of the paper is that there's more to it than that.
- oofta-boofta 4y ago
  "Did you see what she was wearing?"
  - mgraczyk 4y ago
    A better analogy would be if you were hiring rapists at your company and it turned out that they had themselves been victims of sexual assault, then you may want to know what's going on. Your analogy is completely missing the entire point made in the paper, which is that an epidemic model applies in this case.

armatav 4y ago

Be very careful who you waste your time working for. So many companies are cesspools of mental trauma that are very inviting places for the unaware, and if you’re not strong of mind you get to subconsciously carry their issues with you for a long time after.

Mistletoe 4y ago
The original meaning of meme from Richard Dawkins was a mind virus and people still aren’t understanding how damaging and transmissible unhealthy ones are. This paper is a perfect example of them occurring in the real world.

kj4211cash 4y ago

This is why it's important to shame Amazon and other workplaces with ludicrous cultures that damage their tech employees mental health.

LatteLazy 4y ago
Is shaming did anything that would be true. But it doesn't. What we need is actual action politically.
closeparen 4y ago
Ex-Amazons are valued in Silicon Valley explicitly for the hard edge that being socialized there is supposed to have imparted.
- dudul 4y ago
  I'm not in the valley, but honestly I discard all resumes from former Amazon employees. If the tenure is shorter than 1 year I may take a look, just in case. As a manager there is no way I'm contaminating my team with Amazon's culture. And yeah yeah "not all former Amazon blabla". Sure, I dont have time to play the odds. We all know about Amazon's toxic culture.

t344344 4y ago

In my old job I had to fake depression. I lived nice bachelor life, some coworkers were jealous and toxic. I lied that my gf left me. I nuked my social media and started posting cats for adoption...Latter got new girlfriend, 10 years older with two kids... Work become easier. No stress and much less unpaid overtime. Workplace culture influences people a lot.

nevertoolate 4y ago
Fake it till you make it?
- nitin87 4y ago
  good quote .
theonething 4y ago
I'm unclear about the posting cats for adoption part. How does that relate to faking depression? Feigning that you were so depressed you couldn't take care of your cats?
- projektfu 4y ago
  If you spend a lot of time around the rescue community you'll understand this. There are a lot of people coping with depression and anxiety there.
- postsantum 4y ago
  The new girlfriend made him post the cats. Shows the colleagues OP is broken into submission

l_theanine 4y ago

I’ve been reading about microbiomes and things like that over the past year, and I suspect there’s a biological aspect to a lot of mental health issues in workplaces. Certainly the pandemic has renewed public interest in it, but I think to put it in caveman terms: sick people leave sick germs where they go. I haven’t read this paper yet, but it looks pretty cool so far. The abstract certainly makes it seem worth the read. We seem to think ourselves as further removed from meatspace than we really are. We’re a lot more like colonies of ants, I think. What attacks the ant, attacks the colony.

perrygeo 4y ago
> there's a biological aspect to a lot of mental health issues in workplaces how do you explain the same phenomenon occurring in remote workplaces? I agree there's a biological aspect to it. But it's clearly "contagious" over the internet and thus by human communication, not germs.
- l_theanine 4y ago
  Oh well I didn’t say I thought it was mutually exclusive. Germs aren’t the only part of working a shit job. Whether it’s in person, over a video call, or over email, if your supervisor is a dickhead then your team will be unhappy. I was thinking primarily about people who work indoors, in rooms with poor circulation. I’d wager those people are sicker more often, unwell more often, and obese more often. That’s all I meant.

itronitron 4y ago

[flagged]

coldtea 4y ago
Sounds like one of the best things to research and publish in order to help people. And, oh my god, this comment sounds like "just let sleeping dogs lie"...
- dschuetz 4y ago
  Usually this goes like "don't hire the spreaders, and get rid of those who are already employed". It is very difficult and costly to actually help people, compared to make it not your problem - that's capitalism for ya. That study reeks of corporate consulting and management. And it's out there now, research is going on about this.

Blackthorn 4y ago

Great, as if there wasn't enough just world fallacy bs over layoffs, now those people have to deal with this too.

neuroma 4y ago

Reminds me of how Psychiatrists have one if the highest suicide rates of all professions. Seems unusual; like an accountant who's insolvent, or a mechanics who's car always breaks down.

watwut 4y ago
I tried to google it and no list of top professions for suicide contained psychiatrists.
xen2xen1 4y ago
Nah, I'm a computer guy who's computers are never put together fully, as I don't want to mess with it when I get home. Happens all the time. Well, that's my desktop. My servers get TLC.

snitzr 4y ago

Social contagion happens in families as well.

coding123 4y ago

If not remote, it may be gut bugs.

Animats 4y ago

Does sociopathy spread, too? That's more of a problem to an organization. "The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position" is a huge concern if the new manager has sociopathic tendencies.