Stress kills. There’s no way around this. When you’re in a stressful environment, whether it’s your workplace or somewhere else, your body goes through changes that you cannot control. The stress response is set up to deal with situations that may have been common long ago—being chased by a bear, for instance—but that rarely happen today. Because of that, your stress response does thing like raise your blood pressure, raise your heart rate, changes your psychology and causes other physiological changes that, if they are experienced over and over again, can be very damaging.
While most Longview employers likely provide good places to work, there are those who cause their employees constant stress and, because of that, who put those employees at risk of suffering the detrimental effects of stress on the body. Stressful workplaces oftentimes involve:
- Sexual/gender harassment
- Bullying
- Unjustified threats of being fired
- Yelling/Screaming
- Physical intimidation
This is not the norm, but there are certainly precedents for it. In fact, some reality TV shows celebrate bosses who are beyond the pale in how they treat their employees; throwing temper tantrums at their employees that would embarrass a toddler and that should certainly be controllable by an adult. The damage that employees suffer from stressful work environments is real and, in some cases, Longview workers who are injured in this way may be able to sue.
Well Established
NIOSH, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has studied workplace stress extensively. There is a lot of information out there about how workers can be negatively impacted by stressful work environments and, if you’re afraid that you’re just being unreasonable in thinking that you’re suffering actual harm due to stressors at work, you should take a look at this information to learn more.
Long work hours, being injured at work and other potential causes of stress can have severe impacts on the body. Not only can they cause problems such as psychological distress, they can also make employees more likely to be involved in injury incidents, simply because they are distracted and aren’t able to perform their jobs correctly.
Getting Help
A lawyer can help if you’ve been the victim of workplace stress and if you want to do something about it. If you’ve suffered psychological distress due to the stress of being harassed or bullied, Roberts and Roberts may be able to help. If you’ve been injured because of being forced to work overly long hours and working well past the point of exhaustion, they may be able to help. Information that you discuss with an attorney is confidential, so you don’t have to worry about employer retaliation because you set up an appointment to visit with a lawyer.
