A case study of rate of depression in successful

Businessman:

Literature Review:
In the arena of today's social value problems, the businessman is accused and victimized
by his own professional rationale. This rationale derived from traditional economic theory. This
rationale, unlike that of other professions (e.g., law or medicine), does not consist of an ideal
value standard, but rather is an abstract of self-interest. This rationale must be abandoned for a
social model, which realistically clarifies the nature of the social responsibility inherent in the
businessman's professional role.

Most of the organizations are facing the key challenges that are strongly impacting the
performance of individuals and as well as organizations themselves. Businessman are the most
valued capital or assets for countrys organizations but more often they are depressed and facing
the stress in their jobs which increase the negative consequences such as low motivation,
turnover which is directly loss for their business and the employees who exists, depression
impact on their health and psychological condition and these condition also effect on their
behaviors and productively of the organization. The depression in successful businessman is
because of differences between employee jobs demand and amount of control over gathering
these demand by the businessman, are destructive for employee physical and emotional
responses and businessman too.

Reason Many Billionaires Get Depressed (And How They

Snap Out Of It)
In the late 1990s, the internet created thousands of millionaires and a handful of billionaires in
Silicon Valley.

The entrepreneurs who rode the wave early and bailed out before it crashed in the early stage suddenly
found themselves in an unfamiliar position, having worked 80-hour weeks at internet startups for the past
few years, they now no longer needed to work at all. For the millionaires, smart financial planning meant
a comfortable life and the freedom to pursue new things.
For the billionaires, champagne baths every morning and new Lamborghinis every afternoon couldn't
diminish the amount of cash on hand. "Your entire philosophy of money changes," writes author Richard
Frank in his book, "Richistan." "You realize that you can't possibly spend all of your fortune, or even
part of it, in your lifetime, and that your money will probably grow over the years even if you spend
lavishly."

There are entrepreneurs who could live top 1% American lifestyles and not run out of cash for 4,000
years. People who Bill Simmons would call "pajama rich," so rich they can go to a five-star restaurant or
sit courtside at the NBA playoffs in their pajamas. They have so much money that they have nothing to
prove to anyone. And the strange thing is that a striking number of them get totally depressed.

Have you ever swung on the Olympic rings at a playground jungle gym? Kids especially short ones,
like I was have to jump to grab the first ring and then swing like a pendulum in order to reach the next.
To get to the third ring, they have to use the momentum from the previous swing to keep going. If you
hold on to the previous ring too long, you'll stop and wouldn't be able to get enough speed to reach the
next ring.

This is Isaac Newton's first law of motion at work: objects in motion tend to stay in motion, unless acted
on by external forces. Once you start swinging, it's easier to keep swinging than to slow down.

The problem with sudden success, it turns out, is that it can be like having someone lift you up to grab
onto one of the Olympic rings. Even though you get dropped off somewhere far along the chain, you're
stuck in one spot.

Financial planners say that this is why a surprisingly high percentage of the rapidly wealthy get
depressed. As therapist Manfred Kets de Vries once put it in an interview with The Telegraph, "When
money is available in near-limitless quantities, the victim sinks into a kind of inertia."

I'm pretty sure that acquiring a billion dollars would solve all my problems. However, studies show that
the wealthy especially those who fall into it through inheritance or the lottery or sale of a business
are often not happier once they're rich. A meaningful percentage of them believe that their wealth causes
more problems than it solves.

If you want to get really depressed about success, look at what happened to the heroic astronauts of the
1960s and '70s. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, returned home from the historic
Apollo 11 mission and became an alcoholic. Severely depressed, his life unraveled. Aldrin burned
through three marriages and wrote two memoirs about his misery.

Neil Armstrong, the man who stepped out of Apollo 11 just ahead of Aldrin, spent his next few decades
figuring out what to do with his life. He briefly taught some small classes at a university, then quit
unexpectedly. He consulted a little for NASA and some random companies, and did a commercial for
Chrysler, and quit all those things, too. Mostly, he just hid from autograph seekers and sued companies
for using his name in ads.

There were certainly multiple factors contributing to these men's post-moonwalk slump, but the
question, What do you do after walking on the moon? became a gigantic speed bump.
Not coincidentally, this is the same reason that only one-third of Americans are happy at their jobs. When
there's no forward momentum in our careers, we get depressed, too.

As Newton pointed out, an object at rest tends to stay at rest.

So how does one avoid billionaire's depression? Or regular person's stuck-in-a-dead-end-job, lack-of-
momentum-fueled depression?

Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile took on the question in the mid-2000s in a research
study of white-collar employees. She tasked 238 pencil pushers in various industries to keep daily work
diaries. The workers answered open-ended questions about how they felt, what events in their days stood
out. Amabile and her fellow researchers then dissected the 12,000 resulting entries, searching for patterns
in what affects people's "inner" work lives the most dramatically.

The answer, it turned it, was simply progress. A sense of forward motion. Regardless of how small.

And that's the interesting part. Amabile found that minor victories at work were nearly as psychologically
powerful as major breakthroughs. To motivate stuck employees, as Amabile and her colleague Steven J.
Kramer suggest in their book, "The Progress Principle," businesses need to help their workers
experience lots of tiny wins.

For someone who's suffering from a lack of momentum, discouragement comes in part from a feeling of a
lack of control. "Small wins are controllable opportunities that produce visible results," Weick says. And
that's all it takes to start feeling better.

Depression in successful people:

Whether the super-successful the CEOs, the founders, the innovators are more or less
prone to depression than the average person is a tricky, fascinating and a controversial question.
We know that the average CEO is more likely to be a victim of mental depression. In fact, those
tendencies may even help the individual rise to such heights in the first place. But what about
other forms of mental health issue, like clinical depression. That particular disorder is much less
likely a cause for their famous status, but rather a strange symptom of its presence.

A smattering of research has suggested that authority may be linked to depression, and
that CEOs may be depressed at more than double the rate of the general public (which is already
about 20%). Some popular articles have argued that extreme success has so many strings
attached that it can pull a person down completely. Some studies even suggest that rich kids are
more depressed and anxious than their middle or low-income peers. And we know from cross-
national research that depression is more common in wealthy countries than in the less wealthy,
less industrialized ones. But this doesnt tell us much about the prevalence of depression in the
upper vs. the lower socioeconomic classes within a country.

It seems to be that this super-successful group is indeed more prone to major depression.

Uber-success can be depressogenic, says Todd Essig, Forbes contributor and

psychologist in New York City. Many C-suite executives are prone to depression, despite their
success, maybe even because of it.

Its important to point out that depression can affect everyone. No one, no matter how
richly or simply one lives, is immune. That said, there seems to be something about extreme
success that puts one at higher risk for depression perhaps because its so pressurized, so
lonely, or so empty, it triggers depression in those youd least expect it. In fact, some of the most
successful people in history have suffered from relentless, incapacitating depression some have
won their battles, or, at least, continued to battle. Some, sadly, succumb to it.

So why does depression affect the super-successful, the ones who seem have it all? Here
are some reasons the people who should be happy are often exactly the opposite. It may be hard
to empathize with the wealthy depressed person, but its definitely worth trying to understand.

The competition is tiring

I have had a number of high-profile individuals in my practice over the years, says Deborah
Serani, psychologist, and theres no doubt in my mind that they struggle more with depression.
They constantly compare themselves to their statistically equal people. Countries that are low-
income, on the other hand, have low depression rates. When you come from premier country,
theres extreme competition and extreme feelings of failure: You constantly ask yourself, Am I
a have, or a have-not? Or am I an almost-have?

Essig also points out that trying to find worth by looking further up the ladder is pretty
consistently a self-destructive endeavor. And it often adds to depression. Some people
habitually measure their self-worth by whoever seems to be more successful than they are, a
recipe for constant depression-inducing envy.

Working all the time doesnt allow them to focus on the

simple things
Extreme success, and the extraordinary amount of time and effort it takes to get there, can make
for a life that feels precipitous and lonely. When you are a successful businessman, then things
change. Theres a lot of disconnect from simple things, like sitting down for dinner with your
family, where the discussion is about family stuff. Thats the stuff that brings texture and joy to
life; and people may lose a lot of that richness when theyre consumed with a business 24/7.

They may feel detached from their former selves

Extreme wealth, especially when it comes very suddenly, can leave people feeling detached from
themselves, or as if they dont quite know how to identify themselves any more. Sometimes
there are conflicts about felt identity, says Essig. For example, one person said to me the
bigger the bonus, the less I feel like myself.

The industry can tear them down

The kind of business people are in can also affect depression risk and the finance world can be
hard on both the high-energy and quieter types. I see a lot of guys from the big firms like
Goldman or Morgan Stanley, says Dr. Greg Dillon, a psychiatrist in New York City, and these
are really adolescent industries they want someone whos fratty, boisterous, young. But if
youre ruled by commitment to deep and thorough thinking, you may get stuck in the back office,
and thats a depressing place to be. Alternatively, the more adolescent, bravado guys may
never have faced a lot of big challenges. We see a lot of hedge fund guys who really fall apart
when times get bad, and really suffer. They really fall.
Privilege may make them less resilient
Arnold Washton, a psychologist says that depression may also be more common in the
people who have only known wealth, since they may not be familiar with passing themselves
through difficult times. So when they find themselves in difficult situation, they may not feel
well and in fact may feel very poorly. Being born into wealth and privilege, people often show
the opposite characteristics they dont have the experience, because theyve been shielded from
it. They might not respond as well. Whereas people who are really self-made and struggled a lot
to get to the top may be more resilient.

The industry can tear them down

The kind of business people are in can also affect depression risk and the finance world
can be hard on both the high-energy and quieter types. I see a lot of guys from the big firms like
Goldman or Morgan Stanley, says Dr. Greg Dillon, a psychiatrist in New York City, and
these are really adolescent industries they want someone whos fratty, boisterous, young. But
if youre ruled by commitment to deep and thorough thinking, you may get stuck in the back
office, and thats a depressing place to be. Alternatively, the more adolescent, bravado guys
may never have faced a lot of big challenges. We see a lot of hedge fund guys who really fall
apart when times get bad, and really suffer. They really fall.

Their values may change over time

When business is bad, it goes without saying that depression would be more likely.
People who achieve more and more over the years may find that, even when everything looks
great on paper, their goals might be much less satisfying than they thought they would be. Even
if every milestone is hit at exactly the right point, some may find that they feel empty instead of
fulfilled so something has to shift.

Those that do mature, he says, who have families and kids, who are not alcohol
addicts and those who are lucky enough to have failed a couple of times have learned from it.
Those who know enough to say Ill get out, reinvent myself or my career, and ask myself whats
meaningful here? A new job, career, style of business. Or maybe its investing more time in
family or kids.

The people who can be fluid, changing their values and reorganizing their lives around
them, will better off in the long-run, says Dillon.

Again, it may seem hard to empathize with the depression of the super-wealthy (i.e., poor
little rich guy, right?), but the extreme stressors, loneliness, hollowness, and disappointments
they may experience are very real. Being aware that one is depressed in the first place is one first
step to changing it and depression can be very hard for some people to even determine is there,
given its vast array of symptoms, let alone admit to friends and family.

Long hours:
Pfeffer says long working day was another major factor identified in the study that
contributed to work depression. Employers can help make less severe this depression by
avoiding overworking employees. This may necessitate a shift in the companys philosophy on
productivity. Rewarding long work hours, Pfeffer argues, is not the same as rewarding
innovation and high levels of productivity. Focusing on results, rather than the number of hours
someone has logged at their desk is one way to make less severe this common depressor. While
we all know workplace depression exists, Pfeffer says many of us are unaware of the extent to
which workplace depression can impact our health. He says that:
These things are as harmful for mortality as second-hand smoke and they contribute to
approximately 120,000 excess deaths annually just in the United States.

Refrences:
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/4297167/value-issue-business-responsibility-
businessman

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/01/26/why-the-super-successful-get-
depressed/#273172d32b1a

http://www.businessinsider.com/psychology-of-success-why-billionaires-get-depressed-2014-9