The health hazards of IT professionals
By siliconindia   |   Saturday, 08 May 2010, 19:51 IST
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The health hazards of IT professionals
Bangalore :Majority of the doctors say that it is high time for the public to change their mindset about IT professionals being the happiest ones since they make a good deal of money. But the long working hours, less inter-personal interaction and deadlines affect the psychological well-being of techies and they end up paying heavily on health front. "IT sector contribution to India's GDP has increased from 1.2 percent in 1997-98 to 5.8 percent in 2008-09.The sector is contributing a lot and there are few empirical studies related to the physical and psychological problems associated with the demanding and strenuous routine of IT professionals." said Sharma. Around 52 percent complained of headache, body ache and backache. Only 10 percent confirmed of visiting a doctor regularly. On the psychological well-being scale, 8 percent were found least competent, 51 percent were competent and 41 percent were in the category of competent, but these too were borderline cases. When questioned about job satisfaction, only 8 percent confirmed fair liking, 15 percent did not like their job and 77 percent were just doing their part. Of the 1,000, 61 percent had started consuming alcohol and 43 percent smoking as an alternative to beat stress. In a recent research, conducted on 1,000 software proffessionals in the age group of 20-30 years, a young MBBS from city Dr Himanshu Sharma, under his mentor Dr Mudassir Azzez Khan and team members Dr Aman Kumar and Dr Abhinit Kumar found that most IT professionals did not like their work.

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