Death by overwork. Distraught mother appeals to government
We live in a time where the culture of overwork became a plague. This means we spend most of our time at the place of our employment, forgetting about private lives. And some people can’t handle the pressure.
The culture of overwork seems to be increasingly taking over our lives. We spend more time at work, take on overtime and fear that if we don't, someone else will take our position. In the flurry of responsibilities, we forget about our private lives and mental health.
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The culture of overwork can drive people to the extreme and Asian countries are a prime example here. We regularly hear about people committing suicide because they cannot stand the pressure put on them. Like a 26-year-old doctor from Japan who took his own life. His mother is appealing to the government to change its stance on demands employees put on employers.
Deadly overwork culture
As we can read on cnn.com, the family of a 26-year-old doctor from Japan’s Kobe who committed suicide in 2022 is pleading for a change in the nation's approach to work. Takashima Shingo's mother and her lawyers claim that the man worked more than 207 hours overtime at a hospital in the month before taking his own life. Additionally, he had not taken a single day off for more than three months.
Konan Medical Center, the hospital where Takashima Shingo worked, denied the accusations in a press conference last week. In June 2023, however, the government labour inspection body found that the man's death was linked to his long working hours. The deceased was found to have failed to cope with the pressure the hospital was putting on workers, according to the Japanese public broadcaster NHK.
As CNN reports, Japan has long struggled with a persistent culture of overwork. The resulting stress causes mental health crises, often leading to the ultimate. Taking one's own life due to too much work has even been dubbed "karoshi", or "death by overwork".
On Friday 18 August, the family of the 26-year-old doctor held a press conference. The mother of the deceased said that her son had confided in her that no one at work cared about him, that he was completely alone. Takashima Shingo's brother stressed that the 200 extra hours the deceased spent at the hospital proves that the facility "does not ta a solid approach to labour management in the first place".
Source: cnn.com, NHK
