don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States. J. Bartlett Brebner You might have noticed that the latest interview at this site is with Ms. Deborah Jones, a person who has distinguished herself as a megaperformer in promoting healthy lifestyles worldwide. Ms. Jones has been a leader in worksite wellness for many years in Canada; her remarks provide more than a few insights about how far along things are in the area of worksite wellness north of our borders. Is it possible that Canadians are, on the whole, a healthier lot than we are, and if so, might it be due in some measure to the initiatives that Canada has pioneered in fitness and other areas of health promotion, especially at the workplace?

I should have thought to ask Deb this question, but did not. However, to make things interesting, how about if I offer a hypothesis and support it with a few pieces of evidence? I'll venture to suggest that, due to factors we can't fully assess but which might include nasty weather, excessive focus on the sport of hockey, too many stand up comics, insufficient nationalism and really bad baseball teams, Canadians are not as healthy as Americans and that suspicion is supported by absenteeism data collected by the Canadians themselves!

According to a report by Statistics Canada and the Conference Board of Canada, absenteeism north of our border is on the increase, to the extent that it costs an estimated 10 billion dollars Canadian annually. This comes to hundreds of dollars in American money. (Hahaha—just a little humor.) The authors of the Stats Canada report attribute this statistic to high stress, but stress, high or otherwise, is a term so broad as to be meaningless. A Canadian named Martin Shain, in a separate report entitled "Best Advice on Stress Risk Management in the Workplace" (which was not based solely on Canadian data but rather on about 75 studies of organizational stress from around the world), pointed out that organizational stress is most often associated with high demand/low control and high effort/low reward situations. A workplace culture widely perceived as high pressure coupled with low rewards and low control might explain the Canadian workers sense of overload and powerlessness. Perhaps these conditions account for much of the increased absenteeism in Canada; but then again, what country does not have a plentiful supply of employees who do not, as a matter of course, grumble about having to work too hard, whether it's called overload, powerlessness or whatever? After all, what are unions for, anyway?

When you think about all this and realize that I have produced little conclusive evidence as of this point to prove that Canadians are healthier or unhealthier than Americans, what can you conclude? Not much, so far, so let me pull in additional carefully selected data to buttress my shaky position. First, I'll share an extraneous quotation to add a bit of dignity to this otherwise stuffy scientific treatise: A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe. Pierre Burton

Shain and colleagues found, not surprisingly, that the worse the ranking or assessment of health conditions of a company, the higher the medical costs (six times higher, according to the Report) the organization will pay. In Canada, the rates of cardiovascular disease, injuries, anxiety, depression and some forms of cancer, among other financial and human costs, were found to be two and, in some cases, three times higher than in previous years. Other studies suggest that employees in Canada work longer hours than before (over 60 hours per week for half the men surveyed, and 28% of surveyed women). In addition, Canadian employees suffer more depression and weight gain and consume more alcohol now than in the past. The “Stats Canada” report contained this observation: By working these hours we have reverted back to the hours Canadians were working at the turn of the last century. Wow. It sounds to me as if these people might indeed be less healthy than Americans, though I must admit that this does not imply that Americans are on the whole very healthy. No doubt Deb could make a good case that American lifestyles are, on the whole, even less healthy than lifestyles practiced by most Canadians and thus Americans are probably less healthy than the Canucks. But then, I don’t want to spark an international feud here. After all, we have enough trouble at the moment with the Chinese!

Still, I do suspect that Canadians are not as healthy as many of us think they are, despite all the attention their national health care system gets from many seeking reforms of US arrangements for organizing medical care. Also, we tend to think of Canadians as a healthy lot based on the look of prosperity of all those Canadians we see in Florida, along with many other subtle factors that lead us to admire them so. But, those absenteeism figures and grumbling about working conditions makes you wonder--maybe we should start sending some money up there, as is our custom for assisting less fortunate folk throughout the world. Of course, if we do, we’ll want something in return. I don’t know--maybe they could do something about those arctic air masses they send our way.

In any case, look on the bright side regardless of which side of the border you favor and read the daily “Don’s Reports” to mitigate your workplace stress. Whether you are a Canadian or an American, you will surely discover that doing so will boost your moral education, refine your sensibilities, enlarge your imagination, enliven your powers of critical thinking, increase your appreciation of the ludicrous and absurdly incongruous and help you cope with the vulgarity of those whose opinions are at variance with my own.

Enjoy.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MENTAL DOMAIN under the skill area of stress management. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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