A worker of the General State Administration who, after a labor dispute between two other people, changes position; an interim teacher who, after becoming permanent, had to change cities and thus move away from her family or a public health worker who, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, saw how her disabled brother, with whom she lived, died. for the virus, with the consequent guilt that she has carried since then, despite the fact that she has never been able to confirm that she brought the disease home. There are three cases of public employees with one point in common: they have asked for help for mental health problems. The psychological losses among these workers, says the Independent Central and Civil Servants (CSIF), have increased in recent times. But the union also provides alarming data: almost half of these public employees, 46 percent, consume anxiolytics, antidepressants or sleeping pills, among others, almost daily.
The data is extracted from the survey ‘How do you feel?’, prepared by CSIF through interviews with more than 6,300 workers from different areas of public administration, such as education, health, justice or the General Administration of the State. Thus, the vast majority of public employees, specifically 76 percent, recognize that their mental health suffers due to their work conditions. It is this circumstance that most of the time leads to the consumption of psychotropic drugs: 71% admit to taking anxiolytics and hypnosedatives; 12 percent antidepressants and 17% other types of drugs.
The profile that is most repeated, according to this study, is that of a woman between 35 and 67 years old who works in public health, in the administration or in educational centers and uses anxiolytics to cope with work overload, lack of recognition , difficulty in conciliation, discrimination for health reasons, conflict between colleagues, harassment and lack of digital disconnection.
The study also warns about the absence of psychological help in these cases. Although 60 percent of public employees recognize that they need this help, only 38 percent receive it, and in most cases they have to pay for it on their own. «Society has the idea that public administration workers are freer of mental health problems related to conflict at work, but from my point of view, strangely, this is not the case, rather the opposite is almost true. Many times we find that public employees consult even more frequently for mental health problems derived from the workplace than the rest,” says Carlos Llanes, a psychiatrist both in public health and through Muface, who has treated the three cases. mentioned above.
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For this reason, CSIF demands urgent measures from the Government to alleviate this situation. Encarnación Abascal Pérez, national secretary of occupational risk prevention of CSIF, has assured that a comprehensive plan for the prevention of mental health and suicidal behavior is necessary, as well as more budget to increase the number of mental health professionals in the centers. and human resources in the prevention services of the administrations.
Abascal has also called for updating the table of occupational diseases so that mental disorders are recognized as an occupational disease, as well as free psychological support programs for public employees in the workplace.
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