According to the China Youth Daily, a recent survey involving 5,266 employees shows that 25 percent of China's office workers have mental problems to some extent.

Luo Danping, chief editor of "Talent" Column of the www.hr.com.cn who is responsible for the above survey, said that the survey consisted of 12 questions related to respondents' recent mental status and researchers would assess respondents' mental health according to their self-description.

The survey shows that problems concerning mental health are the most serious for those who have been working for less than five years. The fifth year is a turning point for office workers. 30.4 percent of participants who have been working for five years are not mentally healthy enough, with the rate being the highest among all office workers. The proportion of mentally unhealthy workers declines year after year since their sixth year of working.

Qiu Junjie, senior advisor of human resources in the Shanghai-based Apex-Point Management Consulting Co., said that for most office workers, there were four periods one was most likely to face occupational crises, namely one's proper perspective when choosing a career and at the initial phase of one's career, one's being promoted to a higher post after working for five years, career direction in one's forties and continuation of one's career after his/her fifties. Two of these crises will occur when office workers have been working for five years. Therefore, many veteran managers of human resources agree that new employees have the most serious problems during their first five-year working.

The survey also shows that office workers born in the 1980s are more vulnerable to mental problems than those born in other decades. 31.7 percent of those born in the 1980s have mental problems to varying degrees. This is a problem closely related to the "five-year crisis" in working, since those born in the 1980s and new employees are almost the same group.

(Chinanews.cn July 19, 2005)