The consequences of workplace harassment

In the Mobbing phenomenon, it has gained special importance, by evidencing as the cause of depression, generalized anxiety, and even posttraumatic stress disorders, which lead to absenteeism, abandonment of the job, increase in accidents, decrease in quantity and work quality, etc., which produces high costs in industrialized society and the mobbing victim who sees his career or profession, his social and financial situation, and even their health (careers and others, 2002) threatened. Are Consequences of workplace harassment They will be analyzed in the following Psychology -line article.

1. Consequences of workplace harassment
2. Physical consequences
3. Psychic consequences
4. Social consequences
5. Labor consequences

Consequences of workplace harassment

For Hirigoyen (2001) the first symptoms that appear are very similar to stress: tiredness, nervousness, sleep problems, migraines, digestive problems, low back pain; But if the harassment perseveres in time, then a major depressive state can be established. According to the survey conducted by Hirigoyen (2001), 69% of the people who answered the questionnaire had suffered a major depressive state and 52% had varied psychosomatic disorders.

For said author, Working harassment leaves indelible traces that can range from posttraumatic stress to a experience of recurring shame or even lasting changes of your personality. Disvalization persists even if the person moves away from his stalker. The victim carries a psychological scar that makes her fragile, which leads her to live with fear and doubt everyone. Piñuel and Zabala (2001) structures the consequences of mobbing in the affected worker in the following sections:

Physical consequences

There is a wide cast of somatizations:

• disorders Cardiovascular (Hypertension, arrhythmias, chest pains, etc.)
• disorders muscle (Lumbar, cervical pains, tremors, etc.)
• disorders Respiratory (Sensation of drowning, suffocation, hyperventilation, etc.)
• disorders gastrointestinal (Abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, dry mouth, etc.)

Psychic consequences

• Anxiety
• depressive mood
• apathy or loss of interest in activities that previously interested or produced pleasure
• Sleep alterations (insomnia and hypersomnia)
• deep feelings of guilt
• Increase in appetite
• cognitive distortions (failure, guilt, ruin, uselessness, etc.)
• hypervigilance
• suspicion
• Emotional lability with frequent crying
• unstructured suicide ideas, without suicide plan or attempts
• feelings of helplessness and helplessness
• fears of the workplace, to take the phone, to face your boss
• fear of working and not being able to perform their work properly
• Fear to go out
• negative expectations about your future
• selective attention towards all that related to failure
• Decreased memory capacity and difficulties in maintaining recurring thoughts on the mobbing situation

(García and Rolsma, 2003; Fornés, 2002).

In the victim there are personality changes with a predominance of obsessive features (Hostile attitude, and suspicion, chronic feeling of nervousness, hypersensitivity with respect to injustices), depressive features (feelings of helplessness, anhedonia, learned helpless etc.).

Social consequences

The social effects of workplace harassment are characterized by the appearance in the victim of Isolation behaviors, avoidance and withdrawal (Insht, 2001); as well as resignation, the feeling of alienation with respect to society and a cynical attitude towards the environment (Gómez, Burgos and Martín, 2003).

A progressive isolation is usually generated around the victim, due, in part, to the withdrawal of some of his friends, who see the situation turn their backs and disappear, along with the active isolation that the victim exercises.

He doesn't want to be with other people Not to have to give explanations about his departure from the organization, and due to his feeling of failure and lack of trust he thinks that the rest of the people consider him a failure, and is afraid to face the possible criticisms.

Labor consequences

The consequences in the work area suppose the progressive destruction of the victim's working life. Due to the mobbing, a work decline is usually requested due to stress, during which the company can carry out the dismissal or refuse to pay the salary, spread rumors about the victim and lie about its departure from the company.

This manages to present a negative image of the victim, which contributes to decrease their employability, and that it is considered unable to work, and showing negative expectations about their performance and work performance. The victim usually suffers what Piñuel and Zabala (2001) calls 'Economic prostration'. From the first month after dismissal, the company does not enter its salary, which makes its economic level decrease considerably.

In any case, it could be said that the consequences of the victim's health They depend on the duration of harassment, the intensity of aggression as well as its own vulnerability. The impact of harassment is stronger if it is a group against a single person than if it is a single individual, it also seems that the harassment of a superior is more serious than the harassment of a partner. Clinical symptoms have been described that harassment produces in the victim among which different stages can be distinguished (Suárez and others, 2009):

• Self -affirmation stadium. The victim detects conflict or derogatory treatment, interpreting that the reason is on her side and that there is a misunderstanding.
• Billing Stadium. The victim feels bewildered, doubt, does not know what is happening and begins to think about his probable responsibility for what happened.
• Defenseless stadium. In this phase, the victim strives to please and to have a better consideration; This effort ends up triggering a feeling of impotence and helplessness that culminates in a depressive state.
• Traumatic or anxiety stadium. If harassment persists, the victim usually feel vulnerable and present a state of anxiety, impulsive behaviors and loss of control being frequent.
• Chronic Stabilization Stadium. It is likely that a feeling of devaluation and lack of self-esteem will last, being able to establish an anxious-depressive state and posttraumatic stress disorder.

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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