Working nine to five is no longer a way to make a living – one study last year found that just 6% of people in the UK now adhere to traditional working hours. While many of us are continuing to work a 40-hour week (just more flexibly), many others are working longer hours, thanks to globalisation, 24/7 business operations and zero-hour contracts – and they're experiencing mental ill-health as a result. Women are more likely to suffer the psychological strain. A recent study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that women who work more than 55 hours a week are more likely to experience depression than men who work the same long hours.
Based on data from more than 20,000 British adults over 10 years, researchers found that women who worked 55+ hours a week were 7.3% more likely to show depressive symptoms than women who worked 35-40 hours, but the same pattern wasn't evident among men. Working weekends also had a more adverse impact on women – 4.6% reported debilitating low moods as a consequence, versus 3.4% of men.
One explanation is the "potential double-burden experienced by women when their long hours in paid work are added on to their time in domestic labour," the researchers suggested. Household chores and caring responsibilities – which we know still aren't being divided equally in heterosexual relationships – often dominate any free time that overworked women do have. It's no wonder our mental health is suffering. "Our findings should encourage employers and policymakers to consider interventions aimed at reducing women’s burdens without restricting their full participation in the workforce, and at improving psychosocial work conditions," the academics concluded. Too right.
Ahead, three women who know all too well about the connection between overwork and poor mental health share their experience.
Sanya Torkmorad-Jozavi, 25, a freelance artist, milliner and costume designer in London, works long, unpredictable shifts and has been known to spend 20 hours a day in the studio for months on end, including weekends.
No week is ever the same, but the nature of freelancing means I very rarely turn work down. Despite recently vowing not to work on weekends, I still find myself working on projects, emailing and doing admin, so I never really stop. When working on film or TV projects I work 12+ hours a day plus weekends. I've even had my own accommodation taken over for weeks as a production studio. I work with tight deadlines with budgets that don't allow for any assistance, often making barely minimum wage. I usually have to work throughout the week to make the equivalent of what someone would make in an eight-hour day, Monday-to-Friday week.
On top of the stress of supporting yourself financially in a low-paid industry, there's the pressure to take on multiple jobs at once because you’re worried that the work might dry up. I found myself in this position recently. I'm so used to being busy that I had two anxiety-induced panic attacks recently because work wasn't coming. The impact this has on your self-worth and motivation is huge. The long hours also affect me physically because they stop me from sleeping, leaving me rarely relaxed and mentally drained. Emotionally, I'm sometimes all over the place because of stress and deadlines, but in the creative world you’re expected to work nonstop for poor pay as a sign of dedication. If you’re not killing yourself, you’re not working hard enough. That’s the reality of the job.
There's definitely a correlation between my mental health and the hours I work. When I’m not working long hours, my self-esteem is rock bottom so it’s a vicious cycle. During a three-month period I spent not working, I was actually turning down work because my state of mind was so vulnerable. Being involved in a stressful work environment filled with pressure and time restraints was not what I needed.
When my mum died in 2016, I used work to keep busy and constantly needed to be productive, treating my achievements as a source of self-worth. I'd give so much of myself to other people’s projects that when it came to my own work as an artist, my motivation was zero because I saw no worth in it. The lack of sleep and always being engaged and accessible was also really damaging. After a huge job last year I fled to Italy on a one-way ticket so that no one could contact me because my brain was so fried. There’s a lot of pressure to constantly 'be on form' because any moment can be an opportunity. On top of work, is the pressure to be a social butterfly and having chores at home, which I've taken care of since Mum passed away. There's also guilt attached to taking breaks because 'there are bigger problems in the world' and the fact that I 'should be grateful' to be working as a young woman from a working class background.
Alice Penfold, 27, a secondary school English teacher based in London, regularly works 55-hour weeks, not including the marking, planning or extra teaching sessions that spill into evenings or weekends.
Teaching is the most physically and emotionally demanding job I've ever done. Not only are the working hours long, with early starts and often late finishes, but the days themselves are intense. School timetables dictate that you'll be in the classroom 'performing' lesson after lesson, with very limited and fixed times in between to grab a toilet break or a cup of tea. Even in breaktimes, there are duties to do, detentions to run and students to meet with. In addition, the workload is exponentially greater than any other profession I've encountered. There are multiple lessons every day to plan, with marking, assessments, extra intervention sessions, meetings – countless extras! – to fit around full teaching timetables. In fact, just the 'extras' of teaching – the meetings, planning, marking – is a full-time job in itself.
There's undoubtedly a correlation between working hours and mental health. For me, it's not only the length of the hours but the rigorous nature of those hours; teachers must be constantly vigilant: answering questions, monitoring behaviour, reporting concerns, responding to the hundreds of unexpected incidents that inevitably happen on a typical school day, and there is no space, literally or emotionally. It's this lack of autonomy that can be a struggle in particularly long weeks. However rewarding the profession, mental health is key and everyone must have space to recharge and reflect, as well as to pursue their out-of-work interests. When life becomes something to fit around the edges of work, the balance has tipped too far in one direction. Time with friends, family and on outside interests is key to wellbeing but also to work; a job has to be fulfilling but sustainable.
I'm passionate about my subject, English, and about the importance of social mobility and these reasons have driven my decision to teach. Working hard and empowering young people through education is undoubtedly rewarding. However, I also recognise the stress and anxiety that come hand-in-hand. I spend term times permanently overstressed and overtired and always with a sense of incompleteness, as the workload in teaching can never be completed. I find it frustrating when activities that I love to do and which improve my mental health, such as running and reading, are squeezed simply because of the length and expectations of each day.
Current working environments, both in teaching and non-teaching professions, are not conducive to positive mental health. It's important not to generalise across industries and teaching is a unique profession, where changes that are positive for mental health, such as flexible working hours, work-from-home days or proper lunch breaks are not logistically possible. Teaching is regularly in the headlines as a profession which increasing numbers of people leave within five years, being more underpaid and overworked than many other sectors. However, I recognise that many other workplaces also place unrealistic expectations on individuals. I'm not yet at a stage where I'm juggling work with family commitments and already recognise how many of us can compromise health and happiness to meet the expectations of fraught workplaces.
Emily Sherwood, 26, a trainee GP in Birmingham, works up to 80 hours a week during busy periods, including night shifts and every other weekend.
My hours fluctuate a lot. I'm meant to work an average of 50 hours a week, but I get in early every day to prepare for the day ahead, and very often leave late. During the weeks I'm on call, I'm in the hospital for over 70 hours and I can very much feel my mental health decrease – I feel low, have no energy to do anything like exercise, and my tolerance levels are reduced, meaning I snap easily and get upset quickly.
My job requires me to be on my feet all day seeing patients, but more than the physical demand is the mental demand. I see a lot of very sick patients and their families, having to break bad news and see patients I've cared for pass away. I also have to deal with angry and frustrated patients and their relatives who are angry at the system and take it out on the staff. When I get home in the evenings, the emotional load from the day is still playing on my mind – it's not easy to switch off.
I'd describe my current mental health as towards the more anxious end of my 'normal'. I've suffered with anxiety before, and it's noticeably increased having been very busy at work. This is also compounded by the winter months and the lack of natural light. I find myself worrying a lot when I get home about the day at work and small things can keep me up at night and make me upset.
From my own experience of colleagues and family members, my male counterparts seem to have better mental health and states of mind than my female colleagues in a similar situation. I'm not sure whether this is down to emotional intelligence and recognition of health and mental health, or the additional stresses that can often be expected of women. I get a lot of help at home, but I'm certainly more aware of the additional jobs required to make a home and find myself unable to sit down when things need doing. My fiancé and I share the cooking, but I'll often be the one to do the cleaning and similar tasks. We try to keep things equal, but my tolerance is lower and I find myself doing more to satisfy my need for a neat and tidy home.
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