读书碎片 | 现代职场正在大规模地制造抑郁和焦虑

书籍：Lost Connections
作者：Johann Hari
章节：第6章：Cause One: Disconnection from Meaningful Work

读书碎片 #021
以下内容来自阅读中的随手记录，思想在这里被暂时放下。

拓展阅读：
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吃抗抑郁药的第十年，我决定去买一头奶牛

作者提出，抑郁的主要原因之一是与有意义的工作断连（disconnection from meaningful work），而工作是现代人日常生活中耗费时间最长、感受最深的一个领域。

现代职场中普遍存在的无意义感和失权感，正在大规模地制造抑郁和焦虑。

作者引用了知名民调机构盖洛普在2011年至2012年间对全球142个国家数百万劳动者进行的一项极其详尽的调查。

只有13%的人表示他们在工作中是“全心投入的”（engaged），即对工作充满热情并致力于做出积极贡献。

高达63%的人“缺乏投入/游离其外”（not engaged），他们只是在梦游般地熬过工作时间，投入时间但没有投入精力或激情。

还有24%的人是“极度抗拒/消极破坏”（actively disengaged），他们不仅不快乐，甚至在用行动发泄不满，破坏同事的成果。

高达87%的人不喜欢甚至痛恨他们的工作。更可怕的是，随着电子邮件和智能手机的普及，工作时间正在无限蔓延，侵蚀着我们越来越多的清醒生命。

为了找到工作与抑郁症之间的科学联系，作者介绍了著名公共卫生科学家迈克尔·马尔莫特（Michael Marmot）的研究。

70年代，马尔莫特在英国从事了一项庞大的研究“白厅研究”（The Whitehall Studies），对象是英国文官系统（Civil Service）的公务员。这是一个完美的“实验室”：没有人处于贫困中，没有人面临生命危险，大家都在办公桌前工作，但系统内部有着极其严格的等级和薪酬划分。

过去人们普遍认为，处于顶层的老板因为责任大、压力大，更容易心脏病发作或患上抑郁症。但马尔莫特对18000名公务员的数据分析却得出了完全相反的结论：处于文官系统最底层的人，心脏病发作的几率是顶层高官的4倍。并且，在文官系统中的地位越低，患抑郁症的几率就越高（这在社会科学中被称为“梯度”现象）。

为什么稳定的白领工作会让人病倒？马尔莫特通过进一步研究同级别但岗位不同的员工，找出了让工作变得令人抑郁的核心要素：

缺乏控制权（Lack of Control）：这是最关键的因素。如果你对自己的工作有较高的控制权，你患抑郁症的几率就会大幅降低。反之，如果你像打字池里的打字员一样，只能机械地执行别人分配的任务，没有任何决定权，这种感觉是“毁灭灵魂的”（soul-destroying）。

付出与回报失衡（Lack of balance between efforts and rewards）：马尔莫特在调查英国税务局员工的高自杀率时发现，员工面对着永远处理不完的案卷，无论他们多么努力工作，或者工作做得多烂，都没有人会注意到，也没有人会感激他们。世界向你发出的信号是：你是无关紧要的。

地位低下与剥夺感：作者指出，现代医学对“压力”的定义发生了一场革命。最糟糕的压力并不是承担重大责任，而是“承受单调、乏味、毁灭灵魂的工作，每天来上班时都会死掉一点点，因为工作没有触及到他们真实的自我”。马尔莫特总结道：“失权（disempowerment）是身心健康状况不佳的核心。”

这种工作中的死气沉沉不仅限于办公室，它会“溢出”到生活的方方面面。马尔莫特发现，工作越丰富、职位越高的人，下班后的社交活动也越丰富；而从事底层枯燥工作的人，下班后往往精疲力竭，只想瘫在电视机前。

我们之所以抑郁，往往不是因为大脑有病，而是因为我们的工作真的“有毒”。当大部分人在绝大多数清醒的时间里，都被工作剥夺了自主权、被当作机器上的齿轮、付出得不到认可时，抑郁和焦虑就是一种完全可以理解的理性反应。

Between 2011 and 2012, the polling company Gallup conducted the most detailed study ever carried out of how people across the world feel about their work. They studied millions of workers across 142 countries. They found that 13 percent of people say they are engaged in their jobs—which means they are enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and contribute to their organization in a positive manner.

Against them, 63 percent say they are not engaged, which is defined as sleepwalking through their workday, putting time—but not energy or passion—into their work. And a further 24 percent are actively disengaged. They, Gallup explained, aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish … Actively disengaged employees are more or less out to damage their company.

That means, taking the Gallup study, that 87 percent of people, if they read Joe’s story, could recognize at least a little of themselves in it. Nearly twice as many people hate their jobs as love their jobs. And this thing that most of us don’t like doing—that feels like sleepwalking, or worse—now takes up most of our waking lives. Today the average worker checks their work e-mail at 7.42 am, gets to the office at 8.18 am and leaves at 7.19 pm. The concept of work hours is vanishing for most people—so this thing that 87 percent of us don’t enjoy is spreading over more and more of our lives.

2011年至2012年间，民调公司盖洛普开展了一项迄今为止最详细的关于全球各地人们对自己工作感受的研究 。他们研究了来自142个国家的数百万劳动者 。他们发现，有13%的人表示他们在工作中是全心投入的——这意味着他们对工作充满热情和承诺，并以积极的方式为组织做出贡献 。

与此相对，63%的人表示他们缺乏投入，这被定义为在工作日中梦游，投入了时间——但没有投入精力或激情 。还有24%的人极度抗拒/消极破坏 。盖洛普解释说，他们不仅在工作中不快乐；他们还忙于将这种不快乐表现出来。每天，这些员工都在破坏他们全心投入的同事所取得的成果……极度抗拒的员工或多或少是在损害他们的公司 。

这意味着，按照盖洛普的研究，如果读到乔的故事，87%的人都能在其中看到至少一点自己的影子 。讨厌自己工作的人数几乎是热爱自己工作的人数的两倍 。而这件我们大多数人都不喜欢做的事情——感觉像在梦游，或者更糟——现在占据了我们绝大部分的清醒时间 。如今，普通员工在早上7点42分查看工作邮件，8点18分到达办公室，晚上7点19分离开 。工作时间的概念对大多数人来说正在消失——因此，这件87%的人都不喜欢的事情，正在蔓延到我们生活中越来越多的部分 。

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The British civil service … consists of a vast stream of bureaucrats administering every aspect of the British state, and it is organized as tightly as an army. But in the British civil service, nobody is poor; nobody is going home to a damp house; nobody is in physical danger. Everybody does a desk job. But there are real differences in status, and in how much freedom you get at work. British civil servants were divided into grades. The team worked through eighteen thousand civil servants in this way.

英国文官系统……由大量的官僚组成，管理着英国国家事务的方方面面，其组织结构像军队一样严密 。但在英国文官系统中，没有人是贫穷的；没有人下班后回到潮湿的房子里；也没有人面临人身危险。每个人做的都是伏案工作 。但是在地位以及你在工作中拥有的自由度方面，存在着真正的差异。英国公务员被划分为不同的等级 。团队用这种方式对一万八千名公务员进行了调查 。

Picture a man running a big government department, and a guy whose job—eleven steps down the pay scale—is to file his papers and type up his notes. Who’s more likely to have a heart attack? Who’s more likely to be overwhelmed? Who’s more likely to become depressed? Almost everyone believed the answer was clear: it was the boss. It turned out the people at the top of the civil service were four times less likely to have a heart attack than the people at the bottom of the Whitehall ladder. The truth was the opposite of what everyone had expected. If you plotted it on a graph, as your position in the civil service rose, your chances of developing depression fell, step by step. There was a very close relationship between becoming depressed and where you stood in the hierarchy. This is what social scientists call a gradient.

想象一个管理着政府大部门的人，以及一个薪水低十一个等级、工作是为他归档文件和打字的人。谁更容易心脏病发作？谁更容易感到不堪重负？谁更容易患上抑郁症？几乎所有人都认为答案很明显：是老板 。结果证明，处于文官系统顶层的人心脏病发作的几率，是处于白厅阶梯底层的人的四分之一 。真相与所有人的预期恰恰相反 。如果将其绘制在图表上，随着你在文官系统中的职位上升，你患抑郁症的几率就会一步步下降 。患抑郁症与你在等级制度中的位置之间存在非常密切的关系。这就是社会科学家所说的梯度现象 。

If you worked in the civil service and you had a higher degree of control over your work, you were a lot less likely to become depressed or develop severe emotional distress than people working at the same pay level, with the same status, in the same office, as people with a lower degree of control over their work. Michael remembers a woman named Marjorie. She worked as a secretary in the typing pool, where she had to type documents all day, every day. It was heaven, she said, to be allowed to smoke and eat sweets at your desk, but it was absolutely soul-destroying, she told him, to sit there doing work that was shoveled to you and that you didn’t understand. We were not allowed to talk, she said. Michael writes: The thing that characterizes Marjorie’s work is not how much demand there is on her, but that she has no discretion to decide anything at all.

如果你在文官系统工作，并且对自己的工作有较高程度的控制权，那么与在同一办公室、拿着同样薪水、地位相同但对工作控制权较低的人相比，你患抑郁症或出现严重情绪困扰的可能性要小得多 。迈克尔记得一位名叫玛乔丽的女士。她在打字池做秘书，每天整天都要打字 。她说，能在办公桌前抽烟和吃糖简直是天堂，但她告诉他，坐在那里做别人推给你的、你自己根本不理解的工作，是绝对毁灭灵魂的 。她说，我们不被允许说话 。迈克尔写道：玛乔丽工作的特点不在于对她的要求有多高，而在于她根本没有任何自主决定权 。

A few years ago, long after these Whitehall studies, the British government’s tax office had a problem … The staff investigating tax returns kept killing themselves. If these tax inspectors worked really hard and gave it their best, nobody noticed. And if they did a lousy job, nobody noticed, either. Despair often happens, he had learned, when there is a lack of balance between efforts and rewards. The signal you get from the world, in that situation, is—you’re irrelevant. Nobody cares what you do.

几年前，在这些白厅研究结束很久之后，英国政府的税务局遇到了一个问题……负责调查纳税申报表的员工不断自杀 。如果这些税务稽查员工作非常努力、竭尽全力，没有人会注意到 。如果他们工作做得很烂，也没有人会注意到 。他了解到，当付出与回报之间缺乏平衡时，绝望往往就会发生 。在这种情况下，你从世界那里得到的信号是——你是无关紧要的 。没有人关心你在做什么 。

As a result of this research, and the science it opened up, the notion of what constitutes stress at work has undergone a revolution, Michael explains. The worst stress for people isn’t having to bear a lot of responsibility. It is, he told me, having to endure work [that] is monotonous, boring, soul-destroying; [where] they die a little when they come to work each day, because their work touches no part of them that is them. Disempowerment, Michael told me, is at the heart of poor health—physical, mental, and emotional.

迈克尔解释说，由于这项研究及其所开创的科学，什么构成了工作中的压力这一观念发生了一场革命 。对人们来说，最糟糕的压力并不是需要承担很多责任 。他告诉我，最糟糕的压力是不得不忍受单调、乏味、毁灭灵魂的工作；在这里，他们每天来上班时都会死掉一点点，因为他们的工作根本没有触及到他们真实的自我 。迈克尔告诉我，失权感是身心（身体、精神和情感）健康状况不佳的核心 。

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The higher up you went in the civil service, he found, the more friends and social activity you had after work. The lower you went, the more that tapered off—the people with boring, low-status jobs just wanted to collapse in front of the television when they got home. When work is enriching, life is fuller, and that spills over into the things you do outside work, he said to me. But when it’s deadening, you feel shattered at the end of the day, just shattered.

他发现，在文官系统中的职位越高，下班后你的朋友和社交活动就越多 。职位越低，这些活动就越少——那些从事无聊、低地位工作的人，回家后只想瘫倒在电视机前 。他跟我说，当工作丰富充实时，生活也会更充实，这会溢出到你在工作之外所做的事情中 。但是，当工作让人死气沉沉时，在一天结束时你会感到精疲力竭，彻底地精疲力竭 。