The heading ofthis article may appear little dramatic but the facts and figures arenot because 24 suicides and more than 13 attempted cases by FranceTelecom employees have been reported since beginning of 2008.(1)

According to a study by The Work Foundation, nearly a third of working men say that the demands of their job interfere with their private lifeand nearly a quarter feel that their work has caused them to neglect their children.(3)

In one my article published here recently - somewhat similar to the current topic - i categorically mentioned that "the most devastating demand-supply mismatch of Need Vs Time & Energy allocation for essential activities in Professional and Personal life,and often with life threatening consequences due to stress related diseases - is what Work-Life imbalance actually means.(4)

I also said that "maintaining an equilibrium among important priorities in your life is very difficult to achieve in practice, but not impossible, if you are willing to do justice to yourself - for both personal growthand professional achievements - as well as to your family members."(4)

Well,the external environment - as prevailing in the workplace - may not becompletely controllable but does it call for the final step - suicide?

Remembering sadly the incident of an young employee of software major committing suicide because he was not able to adjust and perform according to the expectations of the management, I wrote an article here - appealing to others in similar situation for developing stress bearing abilities.(5)

As mentioned there, if by some means, we are able to check the past 'behavioral 
response'   of those victims - may be through a systematic information collection mechanism from their near and dear ones,' i am sure, a similar background of "unique stress reaction" would emerge.

It should be an additional responsibility of the Human Resource dept to identify and monitor behavioral responses of potential victims, as work pressure will continue tobuild-up in future and many more such cases are likely to happen.

You can bear more stress, if you make yourself much stronger - both physically and mentally, and how to do that has been explained indetails in an article published on helpguide.(6)

You have to accept what you can not change and change yourself to suit it,which you surely can,  because you have in-built abilities to do so,otherwise Darwin's "Theory of Evolution" would have been dumped longago.

14/10 Update:I too went through the same situation way back in early nineties.Working round-the-clock in an endeavor to turnaround a sick company, iignored a critical medical issue of my wife and at last she had to beoperated. My career ambition not only affected me, but also othersrelated to me.I feel sad about it now.

Reference: 1) CNN2) CCOHS3) Bupa4) LAN5) LAN6) helpguide