Even the Staff of Municipalities Are Infected

The Japan Labor Flash has already featured the increasing trend in the number of workers at private firms suffering from depression and other psychiatric problems, but has not referred to personnel in the public sector at the prefectural and municipal levels.

In April this year, the Mental Health Research Institute of the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development conducted a survey in this field for the first time, and came up with disturbing findings. (The survey targeted 1,874 municipalities across the country; effective returns 727; effective return rate 38.8 %).

According to the findings, the proportion of personnel suffering from psychiatric problems has increased in the previous three years, currently accounting for 47.7 percent of all employees. Furthermore, the rates were extremely high among large municipalities: 64.7 percent at those with 1,000-2,999 staff members and 78.6 percent at those with 3,000 or more, exceeding the figure of 61.5 percent that the Institute found among workers at private firms last year. The situation is thus far more serious in municipalities. By age, the number of workers suffering from mental problems is the highest among those in their 30s, exceeding those in their 40s and 50s or above. The proportion of municipalities with staff members who were on leave for one month or longer due to psychiatric problems stood at 53.4 percent of those surveyed. Again, larger organizations are more likely to have staff members with mental problems.

Surprisingly enough, the figures show that workers in municipalities are not free from psychiatric problems. What lies behind this increase in the number of people suffering from mental problems?

The survey shows that 97.6 percent of the respondents felt that citizens were becoming increasingly wary of the administration in their workplaces. At the same time, 94.6 percent of the municipalities surveyed responded that the workload per head has increased; 71.8 percent that opportunities for each staff to work individually had increased; 52.4 percent that opportunities among staff members to communicate with each other had decreased; and 48.8 percent that staff members had fewer opportunities to help each other in their work places. In short, the survey reveals that employees cannot deal with over-rapid changes in the way that work is done and their work environments, in addition to the excessive pressure arising from these changes.

The survey also shows that the increase in the number of workers with mental problems was reduced by approximately 14-17 percent in municipalities where opportunities for workers to help and communicate with each other increased, suggesting possible countermeasures for the future. Needless to say, it will be necessary to identify and implement various measures to check psychiatric problems, although there may be more compound and fundamental reasons behind the increase in the number of people with mental problems.