Addictions are often culturally associated with the small pleasures of life that most people recognize as such: sweet or carbohydrate food, Internet use, tobacco (for smokers), etc.

However, there can also be addictive task-related behaviors that not everyone appreciates. Workaholism is an example of this .

Work Addiction and Other Associated Psychopathologies

Workaholism may seem positive from the point of view of short-term productivity, but has very negative consequences for health . Dedicating more time than necessary to work causes eating and sleeping patterns to change and become much more compressed in schedules, rest hours to become scarce and stress levels to skyrocket, in addition to impoverishing people’s social lives.

However, a study recently published in PLoS ONE links work addiction not only to health problems, but also to fatigue and poor nutrition ,and also to the risk of symptoms associated with mental disorders.

OCD, depression, ADHD…

The results found show a correlation between work addiction and similarities with symptoms of disorders such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), depression or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Thus, workaholics or workaholics have a tendency to present mental disorders in a higher proportion than the population that does not experience this type of addiction.

This research is based on the study of 1300 people living in Norway, who filled out a series of questionnaire pages. Each of these volunteers received a score on a workaholism scale based on choices such as “how often in the last year have you worked so hard that your health has suffered because of it”. But the questionnaire also included questions about indicators of certain mental disorders.

The link, or significant correlation, between the presence of workaholism and sets of symptoms associated with mental disorders emerged once these data had been cross-referenced. Specifically, about 8% of the participants showed tendencies to workaholism , and among these people the proportion of those affected by disorders was much higher.

Specifically, 32.7% of the persons whose characteristics coincided with those of the workaholic presented symptoms associated with ADHD , while for the rest of the volunteers, the percentage was 12.7%. 25% of them could present OCD, and 33% stress disorders. The proportion of persons whose description matched the diagnostic criteria for depression among the workaholics was 9%, and 2.6% among the rest of the group of volunteers.

Conclusions and reflections

These results are not so surprising when we consider the extent to which the effects of workaholism on modern life can be extended. With the widespread use of laptops, tablets and smartphones with Internet access, working hours are increasingly becoming the hours that were previously devoted to leisure, and are mixed with household chores and personal life outside the office.

New workaholics do not have a clear reference to know when the professional facet ends and when the hours dedicated to leisure, rest or family conciliation begin. That is why, if before work addiction was limited to the walls of the building in which one works, now these walls have fallen and the horizon of possibilities for adding hours to work (and subtracting them from one’s private life) has expanded far beyond what is sometimes healthy.

In the light of studies like this we can come to a clear conclusion. Tools and strategies to prevent the onset of work must not only carry the responsibility of making us efficient workers in the long term, away from the burnout syndrome that can cause our productivity to plummet, but more importantly they must preserve our levels of health and well-being.