Professionals in careers that demand over 55 working hours in a week deserve mandatory benefits such as more paid vacation days and monthly mental health checkups.

Last fall semester there were a total of 3388 students enrolled in the College of Health and Human Sciences and the College of Law according to the NIU Data Book 2016-2017. All students aiming to get the degrees they need to enter the demanding career fields of law and healthcare. These student students deserve the right for a career that allows them to do what they are passionate about without putting their own mental health at stake.

Careers with high hourly demands often have much higher suicide rates than those with traditional 40 hour work weeks or less, according to a 2016 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, with workers in the medical, protective services, and legal careers being more susceptible to mental health complications and suicidality.

All three of these career fields typically have very demanding hours. Physicians, lawyers and police officers regularly work over 40 hours a week,according the Occupation Handbook by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Police officers have one of the highest rates of injury and illnesses within a career and those in the medical profession like doctors often working long and irregular hours on demand, according to the BLS.

“Because there are so many people going into those fields, not everybody should be required to be on call or always needed to work overtime,” said freshman psychology major Tailor Thompson.

In health care professions overtime is required and mostly by medical residents, doctors who just graduated medical school. Residents often have to work the most hours in the hospital to get the experience they need. Residents may end up working shifts as long as 24 hours with few breaks, according to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

In law enforcement professions, officers work long hours and are not able to choose their own schedule, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s jobs webpage.

Lawyers regularly work overtime and are subject to a certain amount of billable hours, according to information published by the National Association for Law Placement. If a lawyer exceeds their amount of hours within a week without finishing their work, they must continue working without additional payment, incentivising lawyers to consistently overwork.

“I can understand why.” said junior finance major Steven Coley, “Especially a police officer who works long shifts or a doctor who is always on call. They deal with lots of stress and responsibilities and a lot of traumatizing events can occur in hospitals.”

When professionals are constantly required to be at work there is little time for personal care outside of work. Workers can develop depressive symptoms when working demanding hours, according to a 2017 study conducted by the Stockholm University Stress Research Institute. The study also concluded giving individuals control of their working hours and vacations may work to combat stress and depressive symptoms as well as promoting a healthy work-life balance.

“Robert Karasek found that workers whose jobs rated high in job demands yet low in employee control reported significantly more… depression, anxiety, and insomnia or disturbed sleep than other workers,” according to the American Psychological Association. Working in a demanding field is admirable, however, self-neglect isn’t.

Careers that work employees 55 hours and up weekly, should require employees to participate in monthly mental health check-ins, as well as more vacation days. The average vacation times for occupations such as lawyers and doctors ranges from two to four weeks. “About a third to a half of physicians get in two to four weeks of vacation time a year,” according to research done by Medscape. However, during those times it is likely that work will trickle into their personal time, as the work never really stops.