The Bully-Free Workplace: Stop Jerks, Weasels, and Snakes From Killing Your Organization

Health Harm

We experience positive stress, referred to as eustress, when completing challenging work or physical or mental exercise. Although this kind of effort taxes the body, it produces desirable activities. The opposite of this—the destructive side of stress—is known as distress. Factors do exist that can minimize the harmful effects of stress on the body. These include predictability of negative events, actual or illusory control over one's fate, and availability of validating social support from friends and family. There is also a danger of physical health impairment from prolonged exposure to safety-threatening environmental factors known as stressors. External to the person, stressors trigger the biological human stress response that is the marvelously coordinated activation of the nervous system and secretion of hormones that affect both the body and brain. Harm from bullying—and the direct physical response we experience—can be traced to stress.

Bullying at work has been repeatedly linked to cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases. Although symptoms aren't obvious, hypertension is the first warning sign. Targets may suffer ischemia (a restriction in blood supply), strokes, heart attacks, and cardiac failure. Dr. Peter Schnall and other occupational health researchers have been conducting 30-year longitudinal studies that correlate job strain with coronary heart disease.⁹ Job strain is the simultaneous increase of task demand—such as quantity, quality, or rate of ...