<story><title>Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Spread Through Employee Mobility (2022)</title><url>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00018392211014819</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whatshisface</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;Our findings reveal that when organizations hire employees from other, unhealthy organizations (those with a high prevalence of mental disorders), they “implant” depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders into their workforces. Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis of a mental disorder. The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The study sounds like it is trying to blame the problem on the suffers (the &amp;quot;contagion&amp;quot; of their depression), but the obvious explanation of this is that by hiring from organizations with high stress, you&amp;#x27;re likely to be hiring perpetrators. That explains why it is not more likely to happen when the individual being hired is diagnosed (&amp;quot;Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis&amp;quot;), and also why it is more likely to happen when they enter a position of power (&amp;quot;The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position.&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;I am also not sure if the social contagion model has a lot of evidence for it. If you apply epidemiological models to any data you will get fits for epidemiological model parameters, and those will have a built-in epidemiological interpretation - but without prior knowledge that mental disorders are contagious (I thought most were definitely not?) you would just be making blind nonlinear curve fits to generic functions with many possible explanations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xyzelement</author><text>&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F; The study sounds like it is trying to blame the problem on the suffers (the &amp;quot;contagion&amp;quot; of their depression), but the obvious explanation of this is that by hiring from organizations with high stress, you&amp;#x27;re likely to be hiring perpetrators&lt;p&gt;Really strong disagree. In every company I&amp;#x27;ve worked at (4 so far) the level of mental illness I can observe among coworkers is directly related to who was hired, not what we do with them.&lt;p&gt;As an obvious example, I worked at a hedge fund that strongly filtered for resilience, ability to overcome obstacles, and desire to grow through tough feedback. Almost everyone I worked with there was rational, calm, and sane as a consequence.&lt;p&gt;At other places where mental attributes weren&amp;#x27;t considered (so let&amp;#x27;s say a pure tech interview that doesn&amp;#x27;t amp up the scenario) you could watch the &amp;quot;crazy&amp;quot; come out of the woodwork there moment something triggered it. And I think specifically you could see them feeding on each other&amp;#x27;s anxiety in the Slack hangouts, blind, etc.&lt;p&gt;At some point, seeing 400 people have a meltdown about the layoffs that happened, on daily basis for months, takes a toll on you that&amp;#x27;s worse than the impact of the layoff itself. So yes I see the chorus of crazies impact everyone negatively.</text></comment>
<story><title>Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Spread Through Employee Mobility (2022)</title><url>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00018392211014819</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whatshisface</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;Our findings reveal that when organizations hire employees from other, unhealthy organizations (those with a high prevalence of mental disorders), they “implant” depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders into their workforces. Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis of a mental disorder. The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The study sounds like it is trying to blame the problem on the suffers (the &amp;quot;contagion&amp;quot; of their depression), but the obvious explanation of this is that by hiring from organizations with high stress, you&amp;#x27;re likely to be hiring perpetrators. That explains why it is not more likely to happen when the individual being hired is diagnosed (&amp;quot;Employees leaving unhealthy organizations act as “carriers” of these disorders regardless of whether they themselves have received a formal diagnosis&amp;quot;), and also why it is more likely to happen when they enter a position of power (&amp;quot;The effect is especially pronounced if the newcomer holds a managerial position.&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;I am also not sure if the social contagion model has a lot of evidence for it. If you apply epidemiological models to any data you will get fits for epidemiological model parameters, and those will have a built-in epidemiological interpretation - but without prior knowledge that mental disorders are contagious (I thought most were definitely not?) you would just be making blind nonlinear curve fits to generic functions with many possible explanations.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>steponlego</author><text>Is it unreasonable to suspect that depressed people can spread their attitudes to other people? The concept of purely social diseases is centuries old at this point.</text></comment>