Mental health aspects of occupational health.

TRESS IS easy enough to recognise but very difficult to define satisfactorily. It appears that the med al concept of stress has been borrowed from engineering, that is applying a deforming force to a material and creating a state of tension within it. The stress is not in itself harmful to the material in question but it may cause the development of strains and these are harmful. To continue the analogy with metal, there P may be bending or breaking. Whilst talking about stress in industry, I am not in a position to compete with the academic experts because my situation is very practical. I work entirely within the field of occupational medicine as a physician and therefore my work is concerned, as far as this topic is concerned, with the practical avoidance, recognition and management of stress. Stress is not in itself inherently harmful and may even be beneficial. It is reasonable to compare this with the tension in an old style watch spring which supplies the motive force for keeping the mechanism going. So that the watch is to continue to function the mechanism