Virtually everyone experiences personal issues in life that can affect their attitude. Some of us don’t quite cope as well as others and this can have a serious negative effect on your attitude at work. There’s also long term personal issues like divorce, which can drag out over a period of years.
Financial problems are another serious problem that can cause stress. Many trucks are equipped with a fridge, microwave, coffee maker, etc… to help keep expenses down, but a driver still needs to get out of the truck for social interaction from time to time.
Truck drivers often eat alone in the truck to keep their daily expenses down from the high cost of truck stop meals.
I started to investigate further into issues around driver attitude as I’d seen many friends and co-workers going through similar cycles that I’d gone through. My final push to go forward with this article was when one of the safest and most professional drivers I know had been labelled with an “Attitude problem”.
Knowing this particular person and his work ethics, I was shocked to hear this. After hearing the whole story, it became perfectly clear as to what happened. All he wanted was a reasonable amount of home time to be with his family. Unfortunately, the dispatchers were pushing him too hard. He finally decided he had to draw the line and the they didn’t like it. Have you ever heard this before?
Along with these obvious external problems of work and personal issues, there may be another problem affecting the mental and physical health of drivers. This one can go virtually undetected for long periods of time.
The hidden problems of Truck Driver Attitude
Some psychologists have claimed that factors affecting your attitude can be explicit or implicit. This makes a lot of sense as our coping mechanisms usually only work when we’re aware of a problem that’s explicit in nature. What if there are problems that are implicit (Subconscious) in nature?
When you realize you’re becoming someone, or something you don’t want to be, you have to make a change. However, it can be difficult to recognize a problem if the effects are happening slowly over time.
No matter how much you love driving a truck, or the freedom that comes with being on the open road, there may be something that’s slowly eating away at your soul. It can beat down your tolerance, ability to cope, and begin to feel like it’s affecting your sanity.
What symptoms did we look at?
The symptoms we’re most concerned with are: depression, anger, aggressive driving, obsessive thoughts (often leading to paranoia), hyper-responsiveness and becoming easily agitated (Which often leads to road/fellow driver rage), sleep disorders, and anxiety. There are a few others as well, but we hope you’re seeing where we’re going with this.
We spent countless hours researching clinical studies and psychological papers to find some logical answers. In the end, we found some interesting correlations between the symptoms found in truckers and symptoms found regarding Solitary Confinement in the prison system.
The prison system refers to this as SHU (Secure Housing Unit or Security Housing Unit). SHU syndrome is a condition that affects the mental health of prisoners in negative ways due to long-term isolation.
How is this similar to trucking? Please don’t jump to conclusions as we’re not trying to make a comparison. We don’t want to make truck driving look like a punishment either. If you feel like it’s a punishment, It may be time to choose another career. Truck driving is an occupation that we’ve chosen to be in.
However, we did find that the conditions and the symptoms related to SHU, are also present in trucking.
- Many drivers live in the bunk of their truck for weeks on end. (Social isolation)
- The bunk of a truck is smaller than a jail cell. (Confined space, loneliness)
- Many drivers work more than 12 hours a day, and are often forced to work illegally over their hours of service. (They’re “controlled” for an excessive amount of hours in their lives, often feeling a lack of freedom.)
Truck drivers spend weeks, months, and some even spend years living in a very small space.
One of the articles we looked at was a well known published study by Stuart Grassian called, the Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement. If you’re interested in further reading visit the link for the full article.
The article is focused around solitary confinement within the prison system, but it also refers to Restricted Environmental Stimulation in other settings. This includes aviation, small group confinement (polar expeditions, and submarines), explorers (outer space or global), and certain medical conditions (most notably, deaf and blind patients).
Grassian also mentions a New England Journal of Medicine Study of fifty long-haul truckers “Experiencing vivid visual hallucinations, and some became disoriented as if in a dream”. I’ve yet to find this study, but would be interested in the full version if anyone has it.
