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Workaholism-a virus appears in Modern society

With the increasing competition within the society, the phenomena of workaholism has become more severe. People work all day and all year to earn more money, to get higher social status and to pursue a luxury life. As a result, their health has become worse and their relationship with families and friends has been broken. Finally, they even donÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їt know the feeling of happiness. They lose everything they should have possessed because of overworking. Hence, they feel very vacuous if they are not allowed to work anymore. This essay will define workaholism and critically discuss the effect on our well being and the negative effect will be largely focused on.

Workaholism can be defined as either an addiction to work or a tool to control oneÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs life and a tool to escape problems. Oates (1971)firstly defined workaholism as Ð'ÐŽÐ'oaddiction to work, the compulsion or the uncontrollable need to work incessantlyÐ'ÐŽÐ'±(cited in Bonebright et al. 2000, p469). This definition of workaholism is somewhat like the definition of alcoholism. Others regard workaholism as a tool. According to Klaft and Kleiner(1998), workaholism Ð'ÐŽÐ'oimplies the escape or avoidance of problemsÐ'ÐŽÐ'±(cited in Seybold and Salomone, 1994, p4). They believe workaholism as a tool to escape problems. While Cantarow (1979) and Machlowitz (1980) asserted that workaholism is a tool to control an individualÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs own life (cited in Seybold and Salomone, 1994).

Given so many negative definitions of workaholism, people who are workaholics will neglect such things as their health, families and communities. In other words workaholism has bad effects on peopleÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs well-being.

First of all, the effect of workaholism on individualÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs well being will be discussed. It can be divided into three aspects: the effect on mental health, the disorder of life style and the effect on physical health. Quick, Henley and Quick (2004) claimed that workaholism caused psychological distress and even depression to an employee. According to their opinion, this two mental disease has directly resulted in alcohol abuse. However, the connection between stress and workaholism is not so absolutely as it looks like. Machlowits raised a different opinion that the fear that workaholics shortened peopleÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs lives through stress might be unfounded (cite in Seybold and Salomone, 1994).While this voice is too weak and lack of evidence to be trusted.

On the other hand, workaholism does not only destroy a personÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs mental illness but also brings about chronic and fatal physical illness.

The chronic physical illness includes insomnia and headach. Dawson, McCulloch and Baker (2001) found that if an employee worked over 48 hours a week, he or she would suffer a reduction in both the quantity and the quality of sleep (cited in Hamilton and Denniss, 2005). It indicates that there is a growing number of people who are suffering from insomnia, largely due to overwork. This opinion was agreed by Bent(1998) and he added headache into the unfavourable influence of workaholism on individualÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs well being.

The fatal illness is such illness like coronary heart disease. Booth-Kewley and Friedman (1987) maintained that there was a definite connection between workaholism and coronary heart disease (cited in Seybold and Salomone, 1994). It was generally acknowledged that heart attack is a disease with a high mortality rate. According to this logic, it can be concluded that workaholism can be directly related with death. The alarming finding was also supported by Uehata. Uehata (2001) who conducted a study in Japan and declared that more than two-thirds of people who died from cardiovascular had worked over 60 hours a week (cited in Hamilton and Denniss, 2005). Hamilton and Denniss found similar phenomena also existed in Australia.

In addition, workaholism is a virus that damages the family relationship. The damage falls into two dimension: spouse relationship and parents-children relationship. In the above context, it has been stated that a workaholic may develop into an alcoholic. WhatÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs more, the spouse of the workaholic may also become an alcoholic because of the sense of loneliness. Oates (1977) put forward a point of view that a husbandÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs workaholilsm may result in a wifeÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs addiction to alcohol (cited in Seybold and Salomone, 1994). Besides the abuse of alcohol, the most common result is divorce. Klaft and Kleiner (1988) reported that marriage commonly ends in divorce in a workaholicÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs family (cited in Seybold and Salomone, 1994) which coincides with the view of Quick, Henley and Quick (2004) who contended that workaholism causes the problem of decreasing marital satisfaction and eventually divorce.

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