Panicology

by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

  The manifestation of the stress can harm others too. According to one newspaper headline, a study showed that ‘A bad day at work harms your children’. It advised leaving youngsters in childcare for a little longer while the parent recovers from the strains of the working day. Often the stressed person expresses his or her frustration in some form of rage. The incidents that are picked up by the newspapers normally get generous coverage, often with good justification. The case of a cyclist punching a 69-year-old, who subsequently died, for reprimanding him for riding the wrong way down a one-way street in London and the woman who killed a grandmother by pushing and kicking her when she was just trying to save a parking space at a car boot sale are examples of inexplicable rage – presumably brought on by some form of stress.

  People suffering from stress and anxiety while flying can display symptoms of air rage, or sky rage, which can put passengers and crew at risk. One survey suggested that 15 per cent of flyers had experienced stress or air rage while in the air – this made it a more common complaint than dehydration, fatigue or nausea. The Civil Aviation Authority’s figures showed a 59 per cent increase in the incidence of disruptive passenger behaviour on flights in the latest year.11

  Road rage is inconsistently defined, and there is little scientific evidence available, but there is enough anecdotal information to suggest that it does occur, perhaps with increasing frequency, and does contribute to an important, if small, portion of road safety problems. One American survey of road rage (which incidentally concluded that Miami is the least courteous city for drivers, followed by Phoenix and New York) identified that stress, frustration and bad moods, in addition to running late and being impatient, gave rise to the phenomenon.12

  There is no simple explanation of the increase in stress levels, but many theories abound. Technology is thought to play a part. If we keep our mobile telephones and computers turned on, we irritate others with our devotion to the devices and feel harassed by the desire for a quick response. Yet we feel vulnerable if we switch them off! Many academics put the increased stress down to the rapid pace of change in society. The term ‘hurry sickness’ has been coined to cover the physical and mental consequences of our increasingly pressured lives. Public-sector workers, such as teachers and nurses, are thought to suffer because they work in highly structured, hierarchical workplaces, where there is a lot of accountability and face-to-face contact with the public.

  International comparisons are few and far between but can shed light on the issue. One study of English and French teachers showed that they have much in common – both cited classroom behaviour, the low social status of teaching and the lack of parental support as causes of stress. But there were also differences – 22 per cent of English teachers’ sick leave was attributed to stress compared to just 1 per cent in France, and more than half of the English teachers, as opposed to a fifth of the French sample, reported recently having considered leaving teaching.13 In general, French teachers work shorter hours and are not required to be in school when not teaching, perhaps accounting for the differences. Surveys of teachers have also highlighted assessment inspections and the pressure to perform in exam league tables as exacerbating work-related stress.

  But, even though many people feel ‘stress’, and for some it clearly gives rise to genuine problems, others might justifiably feel that the real problem we face is a booming stress industry that needs to make us feel worse by exaggerating how bad the problem is. There is a National Stress Awareness Day held in Britain – normally in early November if you’re interested – and there is even an International Stress Management Association, a charity (with branches in the US, UK, Brazil and elsewhere) that exists ‘to promote sound knowledge and best practice in the prevention and reduction of human stress’.14 A web search will deliver a very long list of organizations and consultants that will offer individuals and businesses various solutions for their stress problems, including training in ‘listening skills’. You can buy stress-relief sprays, aromatherapy solutions, teas, pills and oils, which claim that ‘in no time, you’ll feel the weight of the world leave your shoulders’.15

  Some commentators have even suggested that the word ‘stress’ should be banned on the grounds that it is too waffly, suggestive and unhelpful. Before using it, we should rethink and try to use a more accurate word. Do we mean overwork, acute boredom, or something more medical, such as depression or anxiety? Are we not in danger of making a mountain out of a molehill?

  The good news is that, although the newspapers fill their pages with stories of stress and depression, they do occasionally give advice on how to cheer ourselves up. One bunch of researchers claimed a significant increase in happiness among people who followed ten simple steps. So, picking up on their recommendations, our advice is to: have a laugh every day; do a good turn; treat yourself; halve your television viewing; count your blessings; say hello to a stranger; look after something you’ve planted; do some exercise; phone or talk to a friend; and find some ‘talk time’ to spend with your partner. If you do, you will on average be 22 per cent happier in a month’s time!16

  Games of Chance

  ‘Pole “too dangerous” for firemen’ Daily Telegraph

  All workplaces have their hazards, television studios no less than many others, even if it is building sites, foundries, sawmills and kitchens that first spring to mind in this connection. Nevertheless it must have come as a shock to his fans when the Daily Telegraph broke the story that Noel Edmonds, a former radio disc jockey and television host tolerated by millions, was suffering from a repetitive strain injury (RSI). ‘Raw deal! Noel Edmonds injures his elbow lifting the telephone,’ the headline ran. Edmonds claimed he had contracted the injury from lifting an old-fashioned telephone used as a prop on his successful television show Deal or No Deal. The show draws out to inordinate length a string of blind guesses ‘contestants’ must make to come away with a sum of money that may be one penny or £250,000 depending on the breaks. No skill is involved and the whole charade could be accomplished in moments without altering the probabilities or the outcome. But that’s hardly the point. Matters are complicated by telephone interventions at various times from a ‘banker’, who offers the contestants the chance to cut and run for some amount less than the remaining stake. This happens a dozen or so times during the course of the forty-five-minute show.

  So Edmonds was suffering from RSI due to lifting a telephone handset weighing perhaps half a kilogram every few minutes for half an hour or so. What are we to make of this? Should we sympathize with the £3 million-a-year presenter? Was he a genuine victim of RSI? Or was he just making a name for himself as the world’s best-paid malingerer? Perhaps it was simply a bad case of inverted snobbery. For, as Edmonds confided to the newspapers, ‘After 40 years in entertainment, I can at last boast that I have suffered an industrial injury.’

  The suffering star took advice from an orthopaedic consultant – a consultant with enough time between appointments, apparently, to be a ‘huge fan’ of the daily afternoon show. He was given steroids and told to modify his hand action, which is standard treatment for the real thing.

  RSI is not a condition in itself, but a catch-all term describing carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis and other conditions where a repetitive action leads to cumulative physical damage to nerves, tendons, muscles or bones, usually in the upper limbs or back. Because pain is only felt gradually and there is often no visible injury, the condition can be relatively serious by the time it is recognized and require prolonged treatment. The same factors also make it easy to doubt the reality of the condition – a doubt understandably reinforced when a miraculous cure is sometimes effected by nothing more than an employer’s financial settlement. Typical sufferers are not television presenters but workers at the other end of the wage scale, such as hairdressers and people processing cheques. In the United States, RSI costs companies more than $20 billion in compensation claims each year, according to the Department of Labor, while in Britain th
e Trades Union Congress estimates that 5.4 million work days are lost.

  As Edward Tenner points out in his book on technology’s ‘revenge effect’, Why Things Bite Back, ‘The human being did not evolve to perform small, rapid, repeated motions for hours on end.’1 But the contrast even between the few examples mentioned so far raises the questions: how small and how rapid are these motions, how great the strain and how oft-repeated must it be to sustain the injury? Can you get it ‘from opening too many bottles of wine at a Christmas party’, as RSI sceptic Paul Aichroth teasingly insists?2

  The truth is that different actions may give rise to different injuries. A single over-enthusiastic cork-pulling may cause a painful stretched muscle or a damaged tendon which will take days or weeks to heal. But this is not RSI as suffered by thousands of people in clerical jobs involving far smaller, more frequent actions. Here, the problem may lie with traditional repetitive actions such as scissoring and chopping. But with ever more widespread computer usage, it is inevitable that RSI has become identified as a technological complaint. This is made clear in Germany, where RSI is known as Mausarm, or mouse arm.

  In the 1980s, Australia was swept by an epidemic of RSI so severe that it dented the nation’s economic prosperity. Prompted by a trade union focus on occupational health in lieu of pursuing the usual wage claim, numerous measures were taken to alleviate the claimed suffering, but even now it is impossible to know whether the phenomenon had a genuine physical basis or was no more than a bad case of mass hysteria, egged on by the interest shown by the medical community. The epidemic duly tailed off, but whether due to workplace improvements or simply because there were no more susceptible people left to experience it cannot be told.

  Despite spectacular outbreaks, RSI is not as prevalent as is sometimes claimed. There are several reasons for this. One is the greater recognition of this kind of workplace injury, which has led to improved design of items such as computer keyboards and the introduction of regular breaks (an option clearly not open to Noel Edmonds, with his gruelling schedule of recording three programmes a day a couple of times a week). Another is that a proportion of those claiming to suffer from RSI are undoubtedly malingerers seeking compensation or time off work. There are, in addition, people who seize on RSI as an outlet for other psychological problems such as stress. Whether they are real or imagined, RSI complaints have been almost invariably associated with employment rather than home or leisure activities.

  This distinction is now becoming blurred. Many of the new technologies that are liable to give rise to RSI are personal. The new scare stories concern ‘BlackBerry thumb’, suffered by people sending prolix emails on their BlackBerry or other brands of personal digital assistant (PDA), and ‘iPod finger’, sustained from over-enthusiastic stroking of the rotary dial on Apple Computer’s popular MP3 player. Mobile phones may cause similar injuries in users who send too many text messages, while the compulsive sending and checking of messages is a growing addiction problem.

  ‘Growth of PDA-related injuries a concern’, USA Today announced, reporting warnings from the American Physical Therapy Association about improper use of the devices. The article noted that one hotel was offering stressed guests ‘a special BlackBerry Balm Hand Massage’. The Independent on Sunday talked of ‘CrackBerry addicts’ who crash their cars or ruin their marriages because they can’t stop using the gadgets. Up to one-third of users show addictive behaviour, according to research done at the University of Northampton.

  Because PDAs such as BlackBerrys are often supplied for work, some employees are beginning to sue their employers when these complaints arise. But with iPods and mobile phones, users generally have nobody but themselves to blame. ‘iPod finger’ made its debut as a medical condition following a warning by the British Chiropractic Association in late 2005. Closer inspection of the story, however, revealed an admission by the association’s Dr Carl Irwin that few actual injuries had yet been reported – but it was ‘only a matter of time’.3

  ‘Millions more’ are at risk from texting, according to a Daily Express article addressed to the nation’s ‘text-maniacs’. The British Chiropractic Association had already warned in 2004 of the dangers of excessive text messaging. Apparently without irony, it suggested that you might avoid problems if you were to ‘shrug your shoulders’ before and after texting.

  Ever since Pac-Man and Space Invaders, computer game consoles have been another focus of concern, because of both the repetitive actions they demand and the sometimes addictive nature of the games. As the leading manufacturer of such games, Nintendo became associated with an RSI condition inevitably known as ‘nintendonitis’. Its games now carry copious instructions to rest the hands, take breaks and so on, but, it seems, sometimes to little avail. With only a few shopping days left to Christmas, the Guardian reported on the company’s latest Wii game controllers, ‘Nintendo steps in after slew of “wiinjuries” ’, describing how innocent bystanders had been left ‘battered and bruised’ by the game’s motion-sensing remote control unit. Apparently, extravagant actions by players of the game combined with a loss of grip at the crucial moment have led to the units flying across rooms and striking priceless vases and grandparents in their path. Enthusiasts have posted images of their ‘wiinjuries’ on the internet. Nintendo responded by offering users more robust versions of the wrist straps supplied with the game.

  The injuries occasioned by these personal hi-tech gadgets may be just as real as those sustained from poorly designed equipment in the workplace, but they are often borne with more fortitude because of the cachet the user gains from possessing the object. Thus, while the devices proliferate, Britain’s principal charity for RSI sufferers, the RSI Association, has ceased to operate for lack of financial support.

  But you don’t even need to use these devices to be at risk, according to the London Metro. ‘Using iPod or phone in a storm “could kill” ’ was the front-page headline picking up on a report from three doctors in the British Medical Journal of a girl hit by lightning while making a call in a city park. According to Metro, the lightning provoked a heart attack, and the girl ‘was found lying on her back. One arm was stuck rigidly upwards and her burnt-out phone was clutched in her hand.’ Fortunately, she escaped complete technological martyrization, surviving with injuries including the loss of hearing ‘in the ear she used to listen to her mobile’.

  The Metro article went on to mention three phone users in China, Korea and Malaysia described in the BMJ piece who had been struck dead by lightning. The good doctors wrote that ‘education is necessary to highlight the risk of using mobile phones outdoors during stormy weather’, but they said nothing about the risk of wielding non-headline-grabbing metallic objects such as umbrellas. Nor was any attempt made to establish whether the risk of injury or death was materially increased by carrying a phone. Deaths due to lightning strike are surprisingly high. The National Weather Service puts the average US death toll due to lightning at seventy-three people a year; the global figure must be over a thousand. Given the high ownership of personal technology, it is remarkable that the BMJ authors could find only three cases worldwide where the victims were using mobile phones.

  How confusing all this is. Is it a disgrace that people are allowed out in storms without realizing the danger? Or ought we to defend our right to roam in all weathers from the do-gooders? British newspapers have recently carried reports that schools have banned children from playing with conkers, that drivers have been prevented from parking their cars under fruit trees, that firemen may no longer slide down poles, that cats may no longer be rescued from trees, and that hanging flower baskets must no longer hang if they do so over people’s heads, all these things supposedly decreed by zealous health and safety officials.

  If a single person were seriously hurt or killed by any one of these curious hazards, the newspapers would naturally be eager to report the story. But in the meantime the media stance is one of pious disparagement of the people whom the Daily Mail t
erms the ‘health and safety killjoys’. Perhaps things have gone too far in the name of risk reduction. A new chairman of Britain’s Health and Safety Commission began his term with an unexpected attack on the pedants in his industry. His advice, passed on in a Daily Telegraph headline, was for us to ‘Get a life and take sensible risks’. OK. Now what, exactly, is a sensible risk? The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health proposed one answer to that question when it sponsored the 2007 World Conker Championships.

  6. Law and Order

  Since 9/11, terror has become a big concern for ordinary people in ordinary places and everyone has a view on the merits of the ‘war on terror’. But just how scared should we be of a terrorist attack? And can a government ever pitch its advice at the right level without scaremongering or appearing to ignore the risks? Traditional crime, however, has more day-to-day impact on people and stories about murderers roaming our streets seem designed to scare. The early release of criminals from prisons adds to the worry.

  Terror Alert

  ‘MI5 head warns of 1600 plotters’ Financial Times

  Fancy seeing the Pyramids? If so, the opening line of the travel advice of the web pages of the UK’s Foreign Office will probably put you off: ‘There is a high threat from terrorism. Attacks can be indiscriminate and against civilian targets, including places frequented by foreigners.’ It doesn’t sound very promising, does it? But then again, there is similarly gloomy advice for other places, such as Morocco or Turkey, where Europeans seek some winter sun in their thousands. The situation is worse in other potential holiday destinations such as Thailand and Indonesia (including Bali), as in both cases the Foreign Office advice omits the reassuring phrase ‘Most visits are trouble-free’.