Work addiction: Part 2

Part 2: assessment, implications and intervention

Summary:

In the second part of their series, Annika Lindberg and Mark Griffiths consider the psychological impact of work addiction and its impact on individuals and the workplace. They also discuss its identification, assessment and management.

The first article in this series considered the concept of ‘work addiction’ and explored some of the vulnerabilities, correlations, and impacts. Additionally, a framework involving six core criteria for addiction was suggested as a useful way of differentiating between someone’s healthy enthusiasm for work and a genuine work addiction.

Similar to other behavioural addictions, work addiction is an easily misunderstood and potentially highly stigmatised condition. The overrepresentation of work addiction in high-skills fields and amongst individuals with an ‘obsessive and perfectionistic’ focus on work, can easily conceal the lines between healthy versus unhealthy engagement with work…

Annika Lindberg is a chartered counselling psychologist who specialises in behavioural addictions. She runs her own private clinic and also works part time at the OH department at Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospital.

Dr Mark Griffiths is a chartered psychologist and distinguished professor of behavioural addiction at Nottingham Trent University.

Author: Lindberg A, Griffiths M

Tags burnout health promotion health surveillance

Occupational Health at Work October/November 2021 (vol. 18/3) pp27-31

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