That’s the motto for this year’s National Stress Awareness Day held today, Wednesday 3 November.

Each year the International Stress Management Association (ISMA) runs this awareness day to encourage all of us to think about our stress levels and how best to manage them. This year there are various national events happening along with two webcasts for those not able to go along to a live event. Find out more on the ISMA website.

Teaching is frequently named as one of the most stressful jobs in polls and surveys. We know from speaking with thousands of teachers every year just how stressful the profession can be. Just this week the TUC announced the results of its 2010 survey that showed stress as the top health and safety concern for workers, with public sector workers far more likely to be worried than those in private business.

The HSE (Health and Safety Executive) has estimated that 9.8 million working days were lost in the UK in 2009/10 through work-related stress*. The CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) also says that stress is now the biggest cause of long term absence in the state sector. In their 2010 Absence Management survey** they found that absence levels are the highest in the public sector, with 9.6 days off per employee. The survey also found that over a third of employers reported that stress related absence has increased over the last year.

Over 52 per cent of callers to our Support Line who told us how they were feeling in the last year said they were experiencing symptoms of stress. From low mood to distress, anxiety and feeling unwell. Stress can affect not only your working life but also your home life – and the causes can arise in both places.

** Absence Management Survey conducted by CIPD and SimplyHealth can be found on the CIPD website here, or an executive summary found here.