GP chief warns WFH (working from home) could have a profound impact on Britain's mental health: Clare Gerada

Sly Saint

Sly Saint

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
article in Mail

  • Head of the Royal College of GPs has warned of WFH impact on mental health
  • Dr Clare Gerada fears not being in an office limits interaction with colleagues
  • Former psychiatrist concerned businesses not offering offices for people to use
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Working from home could have a profound impact on the nation’s mental health, the head of the Royal College of GPs has warned.

Dr Clare Gerada said she had seen the damage that isolation and a lack of clear boundaries between home life and work can cause.

Speaking to The Mail on Sunday’s Medical Minefield podcast this week, the former psychiatrist added: ‘I am increasingly worried about businesses that say there is no longer an office to go to. Moments of interaction are crucial for wellbeing – without them you’ll see more stress and more anxiety.’
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...H-profound-impact-Britains-mental-health.html

hmm

back in April

Clare Gerada: GP advocate of online care has stake in tech company
Ben Ellery
Monday April 18 2022, 12.01am, The Times
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Professor Dame Clare Gerada, in a remote interview on Good Morning Britain, praises digital GP appointments
A GP who dismissed patient concerns about the struggle to get face-to-face appointments holds a stake in a remote consultation software company.

Professor Dame Clare Gerada, president of the Royal College of GPs, said the shift to online consultations was the most positive development of the pandemic and anger over the switch was “a lot of noise”. Gerada owns a stake in eConsult, which provides software to about half the country’s GP surgeries and has profited hugely from Covid.

Sponsored
In an online conference hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine, Gerada and other panel members were asked what was “the most positive surprise” to have come from the pandemic. She answered that in general practice, it was moving 1.2 million daily consultations “almost
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need to register for rest of article.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...line-care-has-stake-in-tech-company-5tnl9fm5f
 
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So, in the time before offices, most of human history, everyone was nuts?

This couldn't be a not so subtle attempt to get the wheels back on the gravy train that 'the establishment' prefers as keeping people in little boxes, despite the environmental impact of forcing people to commute, makes their behaviour easier to control/predict, could it?
 
Why do people feel the need to pontificate in gross generalisations on this topic?

Surely any answers will depend on the nature of the work and individuals’ preferred work styles and personal circumstances. I suspect it will be hard to establish any hard and fast rules and individual decisions will be best decided by the specific employers and employees concerned.

However if energy costs continue to rise will people be rush back to the office in order to save on their heating bills, as long as their commute is not equally more expensive?
 
Wonko said:
So, in the time before offices, most of human history, everyone was nuts?

This couldn't be a not so subtle attempt to get the wheels back on the gravy train that 'the establishment' prefers as keeping people in little boxes, despite the environmental impact of forcing people to commute, makes their behaviour easier to control/predict, could it?
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There is also the vested interests of owners of commercial property not wanting to see their inner city rentals decrease.
 
Complete nonsense. Why do people with extremely narrow skillsets think they are universal experts? Lots of people already worked from home. Workers are literally quitting in droves over having to return to office precisely because it's so liberating.

I worked from home for years. Absolutely loved it. Not everyone is up for it, some are social animals who crave being around others. That's their preference. And clearly this here is Gerada's personal preference, which she somehow feels the need to impose onto others as if her perspective is the universal default everyone should comply to.

Anyone familiar with labor is well aware that it's precisely this part of work that people hate the most: the long expensive commutes, awful work environments, overbearing bosses, having to show presence for the sake of showing presence, expenses that serve no purpose, horrible work politics, etc. It's widely reported that healthcare is often a bullying environment, so it even applies to healthcare, toxic work environments.
Gerada said:
‘I am increasingly worried about businesses that say there is no longer an office to go to. Moments of interaction are crucial for wellbeing – without them you’ll see more stress and more anxiety.’
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Then those words mean nothing at all. Literally just buzzwords meant to scare people. These ideologues are the real catastrophizers, obsessed with shadows and indifferent to the actual predators on the prowl.

Horrible base of the bootlicking.
 
There are some people who are indeed isolated working from home and would do better with getting back to a social (office) setting. Most kids, but not all, also.

However, that leaves out several cohorts (? the percentages) of people who need the flexibility of working from home or remotely from wherever.

Not to mention the savings of transport costs and with less air polllution.

Choice is good.
 
rvallee said:
Complete nonsense. Why do people with extremely narrow skillsets think they are universal experts? Lots of people already worked from home. Workers are literally quitting in droves over having to return to office precisely because it's so liberating.

I worked from home for years. Absolutely loved it. Not everyone is up for it, some are social animals who crave being around others. That's their preference. And clearly this here is Gerada's personal preference, which she somehow feels the need to impose onto others as if her perspective is the universal default everyone should comply to.

Anyone familiar with labor is well aware that it's precisely this part of work that people hate the most: the long expensive commutes, awful work environments, overbearing bosses, having to show presence for the sake of showing presence, expenses that serve no purpose, horrible work politics, etc. It's widely reported that healthcare is often a bullying environment, so it even applies to healthcare, toxic work environments.

Then those words mean nothing at all. Literally just buzzwords meant to scare people. These ideologues are the real catastrophizers, obsessed with shadows and indifferent to the actual predators on the prowl.

Horrible base of the bootlicking.
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I know several people who were glad to be back in the office or the work field. They missed the social contact with their co-workers and clients. The exchanging of ideas that only happens with face-to-face contact. The sitting around the lunch room sharing a laugh with other people. They wanted their home life and work life to be separate. Especially for someone who lives alone and doesn't have a lot of family or friends nearby, it can become lonely not having the contact that you get through work. Working from home isn't for everyone.
 
shak8 said:
Choice is good.
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But not for the plebs.

The general populus cannot possibly be trusted to make healthy choices for themselves without the guidance of such as Gerada. We need to 'advised' on what is best for us, we cannot possibly work it out for ourselves based on our individual circusmtances, we are far to stupid for that.
 
Downsides of going to the office have been listed in others' comments.

Also, open plan offices, those prevalent pens where employees are treated like children, are not conducive to getting the job done. Too much noise, too many distractions.

And, moments of interaction can be negative or positive. But, let's just all focus on the positive....
 
I used to hate going into the office when I was in large open plan environments. People would all be sitting at their desks taking part in different teleconferences, all talking at the same time and it was very distracting. The best thing was actually being able to go for a coffee and sandwich with friends I worked with.

Before teleconferencing caught on we used to have to travel between cities to go for face to face meetings which was exhausting being on trains with strangers all the time and very long working days.

At least connecting in to meetings from home I was in a quiet environment. I was happy enough just going in to the office once a week whenever I had a space on the car park rota. I managed ok with less social interaction, sometimes I wouldn’t see anyone in person for a few days I was fine with that, I was on the phone a lot. But I’m naturally quite an introvert i like time to think things through before engaging with others on an issue. I know family members who absolutely hated being unable to go to the office during lockdown but are more extrovert types who like to bounce ideas around.
 
TigerLilea said:
I know several people who were glad to be back in the office or the work field. They missed the social contact with their co-workers and clients. The exchanging of ideas that only happens with face-to-face contact. The sitting around the lunch room sharing a laugh with other people. They wanted their home life and work life to be separate. Especially for someone who lives alone and doesn't have a lot of family or friends nearby, it can become lonely not having the contact that you get through work. Working from home isn't for everyone.
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Sure. But the opposite is true of likely far more people. Especially as work-life balance is basically the #1 issue regarding labor these days. And no one ever thinks of that because this is not about mental health, it's about very expensive offices not being used and the typical dynamic of extroverts imposing their preferences on everyone else because they are loudest. This is her personal preference and she wants everyone to comply with what she wants for herself.

People having the choice is great. But the discussion never accounts for the other way around, how for so many people this office drudgery is horrible for their quality of life. Whenever that comes up, they're told to suck it up, be adults, this is what working is about. Until the pandemic, the discussion was always 100% skewed. Now it isn't.
 
rvallee said:
And clearly this here is Gerada's personal preference, which she somehow feels the need to impose onto others as if her perspective is the universal default everyone should comply to.
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They do the same with the no-nap advice for ME patients (coz 'sleep hygiene', apparently).

But half the world naps. It is completely normal and non-pathological.
rvallee said:
These ideologues are the real catastrophizers, obsessed with shadows and indifferent to the actual predators on the prowl.
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This. Their whole act is built upon arbitrarily psycho-pathologising normal behaviour and responses, devoid of context and history and any real understanding.

Which would be catastrophising, par excellence.

One is entitled to ask just who is benefiting from all this? Coz it sure ain't patients and the general population. :grumpy:
 
I think it's worth deconstructing the context rather than the words. Gerada of course has to be responsible for her words and her part in this particular performance but the quote from Gerada is actually quite anodyne in contrast to what the Headline claims. This kind of manipulation (headline not matching the source) is now standard practice from what is a highly politicised (both lower and upper case P) media. The Mail papers have a been waging a campaign against 'working from home' for many months.

A notable feature about the article is that it is wholly self referential - the quote is taken not from a direct interview of an informed or interestingly opinioned person (Gerada) but a podcast owned and orchestrated by the newspaper publishing the article. Again - Gerada has to be responsible for her words and her part in this performance - but this is not a simple independent report of the words of an informed or interestingly opinioned person, rather it is a media construct designed to excite the biases of the audience of one particular media group which operates for its own interests.

In addition to exciting audience biases these performative constructs are built with the express intention of provoking a reactive response in the 'non audience' thereby producing an 'opposition' to which the paying audience can respond variously with derision or a sense of oppression - what is commonly called the "woke" or "culture" wars. It's important that medical advocacy doesn't get unknowingly pulled into these confected wars.
 
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" A lot of senior MH experts voicing concern about the shift to home-working. @ClareGerada has seen the fall out first hand in the burned-out GPs she supports"

see second article in my initial post
"Professor Dame Clare Gerada, president of the Royal College of GPs, said the shift to online consultations was the most positive development of the pandemic and anger over the switch was “a lot of noise”. Gerada owns a stake in eConsult, which provides software to about half the country’s GP surgeries and has profited hugely from Covid."
 
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