In Japan, burnout is a real public health problem. The cases of death resulting from this burnout syndrome are increasing among Japanese employees, to such an extent that there is a term to designate this phenomenon: “karoshi”, understand: the risk of death linked to overwork. The fatal overdose of work recently claimed a victim in a 31-year-old political journalist. Miwa Sado, who covered the news in Tokyo for the Japanese public television channel NHK, died in 2013 of cardiac arrest after having chained … 159 hours of overtime work per month. The victim had only had two days off the month before his death. The affair, embarrassing for the reputation of the television channel, has only just been revealed, four years after the events.
In Japan, if the weekly working time is set at 40 hours, few Japanese respect this average, which is rather located at the very least around 49 hours. In 2016 a white paper, initiated by the government of Shinzo Abe, was published to inform about karoshi. This drew up a first worrying inventory: nearly 200 employees would have died of overwork at work during the year 2016 following a heart attack, a stroke or a suicide. .
Burnout, an equally French malaise
“Karoshi” has been officially considered an occupational disease since 1988. In France, while deaths resulting from burnout are rarer than in Japan, burnout is not listed as an occupational disease. In February 2017, a parliamentary mission asked for this recognition of the burnout syndrome as an occupational pathology. A proposal for the moment remained a dead letter.
Read also:
She takes two days off for her mental health
Burn out: the need to improve diagnosis
She loses an eye while playing a smartphone game
