MANY Irish workers are "like lemmings, rushing headlong towards the precipice of burnout and ill health", a leading psychologist has warned Irish employers.

"Life and work in the Ireland of the 1990s have become less predictable at the same time as demands on the individual have increased," Prof Ciaran A. O'Boyle of the Royal College of Surgeons has told delegates to the Irish Business and Employers. Confederation employee relations conference in Dublin.

"Even our children are subjected to increasing pressure to perform. Witness the psychological fall out from the Leaving Certificate examination and the tragic increase in the suicide rates among young Irish males, many of whom are little more than children."

He was addressing the issue of stress and ways of managing it in business organisations. By coincidence, stress was one of the main topics of debate at the Dublin regional conference of SIPTU last weekend. Delegates from private companies in Dublin region expressed concern, not so much at the effect of stress on themselves as on their families. As one delegate told this reporter "Stress is often the most important thing you bring home from work every night."

The Employee Relations Conference is the nearest thing IBEC has to a trade union delegate conference. Yesterday's meeting had the theme "Competitive Edge Through People". It was opened by triple Olympic gold medalist Ms Michelle Smith and the emphasis was on developing entrepreneurial spirit and coming to grips with the "corporate global village" created by new technology.

However, the one issue that not only every IBEC delegate but also many trade unionists and people on the dole queue for that matter could identify with was stress.

"Stress is becoming an increasingly global phenomenon affecting all countries, all professions and all categories of worker," says Prof O'Boyle.

He says the Japanese have a word for it, "karoshi", which means death from overwork. "And half of them, apparently live in fear of such a death." He adds. "The myth of the hero executive bodes ill for our society, if the best and brightest end up having no time for anything but themselves and their work. And if the price of success has to be total immersion in that work."

But he points out that stress can operate at every level in a company and in all sorts of industries in any country.

Yes, for such a widely experienced phenomenon, stress is little understood, says Prof O'Boyle. "Some use it to mean the pressures on an individual, while others use it to mean the individual's response to those pressures. In fact stress incorporates both elements."

There was now a general consensus that stress occurred where there was an imbalance in the relationship of an individual with his or her environment and/or other individuals. When people are faced with demands "to which they feel unable to respond adequately, a response is activated to cope with the situation".

"The response will depend on a combination of different factors, including the extent of the demand, the personality and coping resources of the individual, the constraints on the person who is trying to cope and the amount and type of support they receive from others.

"Stress is not tied to a situation but to an individual's interpretation of it. As Shakespeare put it. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking it so." Prof O'Boyle points out that where people find they have the coping resources to meet a challenge, they can feel "exhilarated by the successful achievement of a difficult task an example of positive stress which gives spice and enjoyment to life".

Prof O'Boyle says an absence of stimulation or an adequate challenge can also cause stress. People in boring jobs or those who feel under promoted can find themselves in stressful situations at work.

Some managers try to use stress as a way of forcing people to do more work, but the most common approach to the problem of stress is to ignore it. A recent British survey of managers in manufacturing industry found that 86 per cent of those surveyed suffered stress, but nearly three quarters of the companies employing them provided no help whatever.

Interventions often only occur, when there is a crisis. And that can prove too late. It can also prove expensive.