All the Damage of Repressed Rage
According to the Italian Ministry of Health, strenuous work (lavoro usurante) occurs in those jobs that seriously undermine physical health and have a much higher incidence of cancer and occupational hazard than the average. Considering trying jobs, researchers have defined three causes of distress: impairment of daily activities, the onset of chronic diseases, and psychological illness. However, while chronic disease is easy to define, psychological damage is harder to pinpoint. In the list of jobs that wear workers out, there are certain activities that are certainly dangerous in physical (and psychological) terms, like coal and stone mining. But it's harder to assess psychological and physical damage among people that work in pleasant environments. In the past physical ailments and psychological suffering were treated as two distinct entities, having no apparent interaction. Conversely, recent research has been able to scientifically describe the influence of psychological distress on overall health.
In particular, Psycho-Neuro-Immunoendocrinology (PNI) looks at the interdependence of biological and psychological aspects and provides a more accurate explanation of the onset of tumors, cardiovascular disease and other major pathologies, also among employees who seem to work in healthy environments and enviable professions. PNI has shown how the management of emotions, and specifically the repression of rage, is a factor inducing hormonal variations, which can play a decisive role in development of malignant illnesses. This occurs through the base mechanism of stress, which involves the neural system, endocrine glands, and areas of the brain where emotions are perceived and processed.
Arduous work could also mean to be in a workplace which, because of organizational dysfunctions or inadequate or unfair leadership style, constantly requires employees to tolerate stressful situations that stimulate a rage response without permitting them to vent their anger. In research studies regarding the rehabilitation of people with grave work burnouts, what emerges is not only for how long rage was kept repressed, but that seeing one's work unacknowledged combined with sense of loss of control and autonomy over one's job activity creates a stressful condition which is very harmful for one's health. When an event is perceived as very stressful, your body produces higher levels of certain hormones (adrenaline in acute situations and cortisol in chronic conditions). In case of chronic stress, these hormones can cause a rise in blood pressure and density (with risk of heart attack and brain strokes), rise in glycemia (with attending risk of diabetes), sleep disorders (insomnia), mood disorders (depression, anxiety), and numerous other pathologies.
What's worrying is that mental illness caused by chronic stress has been on the rise: by 2020 depression is forecasted to become the second main pathology, and the EU calculates that the cost of mental disease is already around 2-3% of GDP today, because of its negative effect on productivity. These findings should make us review the definition of what strenuous work is, although the diagnosis about the actual link between the type of task performed, the amount of stress it causes and the onset of depression can be very complex.