How Can You Minimise Your Stress Level

Constant long-haul travel can have a serious impact on your mental wellbeing. So how can you minimise your stress levels?

- Sally Brown

Modern international travel can feel like a series of hurdles to negotiate, whether it’s the late arrival of your airport taxi, unexpected traffic jams and flight delays, or just the sequential set of queues, from checkin, bag drop, security, lounge access and boarding to baggage collection and passport control. In between periods of stress, there are periods of boredom, often combined with opportunities to over-drink or eat.

Throw in jet lag, disrupted sleep, feelings of loneliness, disconnect from colleagues and guilt at leaving loved ones, and it’s no surprise that a quarter of frequent travellers have experienced mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, according to a survey by the International SOS Foundation and Kingston University.

Of course, it’s not only frequent travellers who experience work-related stress. According to the Health and Safety Executive (a UK government agency), work-related stress, depression or anxiety accounts for 44 per cent of work-related ill health and 57 per cent of all working days lost to ill health. But according to the Kingston research, frequent travel adds an additional element of pressure – 45 per cent of the 200 frequent travellers surveyed reported higher stress levels than normal while on work trips. And 31 per cent said they experienced emotional exhaustion, a major risk factor of burnout, on a weekly basis.

STAGES OF BURNOUT

Burnout is defined as a “syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment”, according to Professor Christina Maslach, the psychologist who first identified the syndrome in the 1970s.