The first report was published by Lifeline Australia in 2009 on the effects that stress is having on everyday Australians’ hip pocket. Apart from the significant financial impact that stress is having on the economy, the majority of everyday Australians are suffering in silence, unaware that they can do something about it. At this very moment 91% of Australians feel stressed about some aspect of their lives. What’s more, stress has been linked to obesity, premature ageing and heart disease and that’s just the start.
The second report was published in 2013 by the Lifeline Stress Pole on the effect of stress on sleep. It indicated that 2/3rds of Australians had lost sleep due to stress. There is no doubt that stress is slowly killing us, and as there are no signs that the pace at which we live our lives is on the decline, we need to start taking this seriously TODAY.
The good news is you do have options and you can reduce the effects of stress on your mind and body, help is just around the corner and the first step is awareness and recognising that you do have choices. Call Elaine to discuss how Hypnotherapy can help.
Stress Costs Taxpayer $300K Every Day
Release date: 21 Jul 2009 Stress is costing our community billions of dollars every year, according to data compiled by Lifeline Australia, including some brand new information. New data shows that stress is costing the tax payer at least $107 million a year in Medicare Benefits as well as being responsible for $15 billion in annual lost productivity.
“Our modern life is stressful, the speed in which we are expected to live and work is becoming bad for our health,” Lifeline CEO Dawn O’Neil said today. “The current financial crisis is not helping either, as people start to feel the pinch of higher a cost of living, more unemployment, longer working hours and greater expectations in the work place. It’s resulting in more stress leave and more visits to the GP with stress related symptoms.”
Lifeline asked the Family Medicine Research Centre at the University of Sydney for the latest results from their Bettering the Evaluation And Care of Health (BEACH) program (unpublished data 2009).
BEACH showed that these stress related symptoms accounted for 2.55% of all GP visits. This means there were about 2.9 million GP consultations for stress related symptoms, covered by Medicare benefits in 2008-09. This is costing the Australian Government $107 million dollars a year. That’s almost $300,000 a day out of the taxpayer’s pocket. “This new data from the University of Sydney is quite conservative at 2.55% of total visits to the GP,” Ms O’Neil said. “However, $300,000 tax dollars a day for stress is still a shock.”
“Also, we think it’s important to note that research from America puts the percentage of GP visits for stress at around 70%, so this is certainly conservative.” A recent report by Medibank found that people in Australia are taking 3.2 sick days a year for stress, resulting in $5.12 billion in lost productivity. However, ‘presenteeism’ or when stressed people go to work but can’t function, adds $9.96 billion to this number.“
Just how much is stress costing us? These are only two aspects of our economy. In a time when the world is facing a financial crisis, we think it’s time to stress down as a nation,” Ms O’Neil said.
Work and Finance Stress Causes Australians to Lose Sleep
Release date: 9 July 2013
Lifeline’s 2013 Stress Poll reveals that almost two thirds of Australians have lost sleep during the past year due to stress.
Work is the major stress in people lives – with 78% of respondents experiencing stress at work, followed by 71% of respondents suffering from stress caused by finances. Alarmingly, around a quarter of all respondents indicated they had experienced a lot of stress in these areas of their life. Of particular concern is that over 70% of women are occasionally losing sleep due to stress whilst almost 20% are losing sleep regularly.