One of the biggest mistakes we are making as a society is assuming that living tired is normal.

Spain is one of the European countries where the most workers They link their psychological discomfort to work and, in fact, sick leave due to mental disorders have more than doubled since 2016. That’s the bad news, the good news is that we’re starting to know why.

Although that, if we are honest, if we think about it, it is not such good news either. we have become accustomed

We have normalized being exhausted… According to the OSH Pulse 2025 survey of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work40% of Spanish workers link their stress, anxiety or depression directly to work. The European average, to contextualize the problem, is 29%. Only four countries (Greece, Finland, Cyprus and Poland) surpass us.

…and we know exactly why it happens. In 1993, Bruce McEwen and Elios Stellar developed the idea of ​​’allostatic load’. That is, the physical and psychological ‘wear and tear’ that the body pays for adapting again and again to chronic or repeated stress. It is not a small price: the cardiovascular, metabolic, immune and neuroendocrine wear and tear is enormous and has consequences.

A 2021 systematic review makes clear that a high allostatic load is related to increased all-cause mortality, cognitive impairment, chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and psychiatric disorders. It is logical: when stress mediators (cortisol, adrenaline, etc…) remain chronically activated, the brain gets used to it, the body begins to work above its capacity and the systems suffer.

Furthermore (and this is very curious) it seems that chronic stress deteriorates the same brain areas that allow us to realize that we are wrong.

The (not so great) Spanish paradox: Our country not only has some of the worst work stress data in Europe, but the preventive resources They are among the lowest on the continent. That is, we have a problem, but we are not spending too much money to solve it.

And it’s just a question of money. According to the same survey, 54% of Spanish employees fear that revealing a mental health problem will harm their career.

And how do we solve it? Normally, experts understand that there is an individual approach, a union approach and a health approach. In Spain (and here the media is very much to blame) we tend to focus on the individual who, furthermore, is the one who less evidence of systemic efficacy has behind.

So maybe the only thing we can do is start taking it seriously.

Image | Luis Villamil

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