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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:
The study: "Mental Capital: a preliminary study into the psychological dimension of economic development," was commissioned by the Dutch Council for Health Research.
Weehuizen notes that while this report deals with the situation in the Netherlands, the same is happening in all modern economies.
In the industrial sector you can achieve that by putting in more and better machines, but in the service economy the main way to achieve this is by making people work more and more intensely.
In the modern knowledge economy -- in which increasing numbers of people are working in the services sector - workers need to be autonomous, flexible, adaptive, and able to continuously deal with new circumstances, tasks and knowledge.
Research shows that this is difficult for many workers, and it is leading to greater levels of stress and mental health problems.
Thirty percent of the cost of health care in the Netherlands is directly or indirectly related to metal health problems like work related stress, burn out, depression and other ailments.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) about 4 % of gross national product (GNP) in countries such as the Netherlands is lost due to the direct and indirect costs of mental health problems.
Policy measures Governments should therefore invest more in the mental capital of their economies by putting more money into treatment of mental health related problems and, even more important, into prevention.
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Posted on November 5, 2006 05:06 PM
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