5 months ago
72
Over the years, I’ve seen many entrepreneurs lose health, marriages, family and their financial security to high aspiration; never to laziness or vagrancy.
Saturday, May 31 marked the end to Mental Health Awareness Month, which saw many rallying loudly around emotional well-being and resilience. Yet few voices were heard on the heavy toll of entrepreneurship.
Studies show that entrepreneurs have a higher incidence of mental health issues like depression, anxiety and burnout than the general population. Now, as we step into June, which is recognised as Men’s Health Month, the growing calls for laser focus on wellness should not be ignored.
Running your own enterprise is often glorified as a freedom marathon, but we rarely hear the tabulation of stressors that become the breaking point for your well-being. In some industries, it’s a silent death sentence. In most, it’s a gross human tax on hard work and ambition, with a ripple effect that Jamaica can’t afford.
In recent years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that stress has become the “health epidemic of the 21st century”. What a stress!, indeed. It affects the cardiovascular system, nervous system, immune response, and mental health.
WHO has joined global medical experts in frantically waving the red flag in unison, warning that chronic stress shortens your life, increasing the risk of heart disease by 40 per cent, stroke by 50 per cent, and Type 2 diabetes by 60 per cent. There’s more! This alarm followed a groundbreaking joint study by Harvard and Stanford.
Researchers found that job-related stress contributes 120,000 to 170,000 deaths per year in the United States alone, and racks up over US$190 billion annually in healthcare costs. These numbers are typically associated with major public health crises like smoking.
Here is the clincher: while the study did not focus exclusively on specific demographic groups, the researchers acknowledged that certain populations, such as minorities and less-educated workers, may experience more pronounced effects from workplace stress.
This is job-related stress for employees, typically employed in small, medium and large firms or organisations, and it is untenable. It is even more alarming when we account for financial insecurity that comes with entrepreneurship and self-employment, especially in Jamaica where cash flow is uncertain, markets are small and fickle, and mounting personal debt is commonplace.
Many entrepreneurs typically juggle six to 12 different job titles in a business for many years, on their journey, which is not linear – meaning there is no straight line or upward trajectory guaranteed. Instead, a roller coaster that spans the entire life cycle. Except it’s not a joyride. Long hours, lack of support, financial strain, and the emotional weight of carrying a business are recipes for disaster.
Men are disproportionately affected by chronic illness, premature death and untreated mental struggles. Those who run their own business are even more susceptible to severe illness and debilitating depression.
What is worse is that men are also less likely to seek help when overwhelmed, more likely to internalise stress and self-medicate, and are culturally ridiculed as weak if they concede the slightest emotional vulnerability.
A few years ago I came across a viral video that has never left my mind. In it, a family counsellor asks a middle-age man to drop to the ground and do some push-ups. As the man grows visibly exhausted, the counsellor then invites the man’s teenage son to sit on his back and instructs the man to keep pushing. The father, straining and near collapse, soldiers on and keeps going, though he moves more slowly, and takes a longer time to rest in between movements.
The counsellor then turned to the observers in the room before focusing his attention on the son, and says: “Do you see how hard that is for him? He doesn’t complain, even as you make his life so much harder. Not because he’s carrying it means the load is not heavy”.
Too many people are living like that. Silently suffering. Unsupported. Buckling under pressure with no relief in sight. This should move us beyond awareness to action. We need a cultural shift and urgent policy intervention.
To our policymakers, especially those at the Ministry of Health, include these hidden burdens in public health agendas. Increase access to mental health and stress management resources. Just as we run national campaigns for road safety, we urgently need public education and prevention efforts focused on overwork, chronic stress and burnout.
Let’s be clear: entrepreneurship will always carry a degree of stress. But chronic, unmanaged stress is not the price of success. It’s a threat to sustainability. Our society can’t afford for some of its most industrious and dynamic people to die prematurely.
One love!
Yaneek Page is the programme lead for Market Entry USA, and a certified trainer in entrepreneurship.yaneek.page@gmail.com
English (US) ·