Stress can be good for you. I will also stick my neck out and say work is good for you. There is plenty of evidence that not having a job, even if you have money, causes stress.

Dealing with stress-related problems is a significant part of my work in the City of London, but I am cynical about the media attention stress attracts and the cultural pressure to perceive it as an illness. One high-profile case was high-flyer William Littlewood, who recently asked his employer, Jupiter Income, for a sabbatical to recover from "exhaustion'. It is almost impossible to pick up a magazine without being told how to deal with work-derived stress. Indeed the whole issue is in real danger of becoming an industry. We need a voice of reason which acknowledges the problems without exaggerating them, and seeks to address the causes in a balanced and more rational way. I have no doubt that the financial world can be a very stressful place. This can be both good and bad. Clearly the main drivers of stress in the City are long hours, long and/or difficult commute times, poor communication, lack of control over work, job insecurity and peer pressure. The rewards are high and the pressures are high and corporate culture tends to revolve around performance, self-motivation and survival of the fittest. Up or out. Stress is an expensive issue. There are awards – the latest one was for more than £200,000 (E320,000) – and estimates suggest that the cost to business in the UK runs to billions. No one really knows exactly because there are so many hidden elements. Stress leads to increased time off work which costs money and causes disruption. it leads to long-term sickness and disability claims and it leads to underperformance. These elements are difficult to measure but they do damage business.But the City runs on its people. They are the real resource and forward-looking organisations will aim to get the best out of them. Stress damages performance and so it really does not make sense to ignore it. That doesn't mean buying a counselling service and continuing to make the same mistakes: it means looking at the whole issue within an organisation, seeing what causes the problems and then tackling them. There is more than one aspect to stress. There is the stress caused by work and by other aspects of life and corporate culture. Then there is the individual. Some people are more robust and resilient than others, some have good coping mechanisms and some live on their nerves. Many of the skills needed to survive high pressure can be learnt, but first, of course, you have to realise that you need them. It comes more naturally to some than others. The other side of the equation is corporate culture. Companies need to understand that survival of the fittest and ruling by fear and greed does not necessarily give you the best people or get the best performance out of them. Added to this the current spate of work-related stress payment claims in the courts means that everyone is going to have to tackle the problem whether they want to or not. This has to come from the top and work down in any organisation. That means that the people at the top have to recognise the business advantages of dealing with the stress issue – avoiding claims but also getting the best out of the people who work for them. It is about training managers to recognise stress in themselves, to see how they stress other people and to recognise stress in members of their team. Ultimately, people choose the type of work that they go into and, therefore, they are choosing how much stress they want in their working lives. It's a bit like deciding what type of car you want to drive – if you want a lot of excitement, speed, status and a modest helping of fear you need a Porsche, preferably the GT3 Porsche Carrera (only 20 imported each year). But remember that you can't take your eye off the road for a moment and you'll never get a family in the back seat. If you want a comfortable armchair of a car where you can listen to the radio and carry your family and your dog in comfort you might prefer a people carrier or a Mercedes automatic. The City should have room for all models. If your favourite is a Morris Oxford, the City may not be the place for you. Perhaps we should think of companies as roads. If they are in good condition and well managed, many of us would choose to drive the Porsche, at least for part of the time.