Stock marked

Does full-time share trading show poor returns for health?

I invested my 2007 bonus in the stock market," says a 31-year-old business consultant from an MNC in Gurgaon. "That was a real stupid move." Like millions of other investors, he then watched in horror as the markets sank and sank last month.

"When it was real bad, I was checking [the share values] 10 times a day. Now I don't check because it makes [me] feel miserable." The father of one of his colleagues suffered a heart attack.

In Mumbai and Ahmedabad after the fall, as a business daily reported, police, hospitals and fire services were on standby for emergency cases and suicide attempts. Doctors were messaging patients to keep up their medications or, if diabetic, to boost their insulin dose.

What about those whose profession is investing in the stock market? What price do they pay for being held to ransom every single working day?

Alden Cass, a well-known psychotherapist for overstressed Wall Street overachievers, as a doctoral student studied mental health among Wall Street stockbrokers.

He found that almost a quarter of his subjects had major depression, which meant they needed professional help and possibly medication. Another 38 per cent were "subclinically" depressed.

Cass's subjects also showed signs of drug and alcohol abuse, and some had thoughts of hurting themselves, apart from feelings of "guilt and inadequacy".

The better they were doing financially, the more likely they were to be depressed, anxious and emotionally exhausted. Most did not even realise how unhappy they were.

Although they rarely missed work, even when unwell, and continued to generate profits for their firms and clients, were these stockbrokers heading towards early burnout?

Stress has a variety of ill- effects. Stockbrokers are known to have elevated blood pressure through stock exchange trading hours, because of the constant mental effort.

Long-term stress can result in hypertension and other nonreversible changes. And when the body's in "fight" mode, peripheral and gastrointestinal blood flow reduces, one result of which is to hurt digestion.

Eventually, stress and depression can lead to absenteeism and loss of productivity, and also make it harder to take good decisions "" which is not reassuring in a money manager.

What will help? Social support, for one "" family and friends. If that's not immediately possible (stockbrokers are often loners, says Cass), then pets to love, as a recent study led by researcher Karen M Allen showed. But most of all, employers who recognise the danger and add stress management to their training programmes.