Analytical description of stress management challenges in mental health systems, suggesting implications for corporate design.
In many workplace mental health systems, organizations tend to optimize visible stress indicators while accumulated stress remains unaddressed and increasingly invisible. This paper documents a Recurring Capture Pattern (RCP) observed in corporate mental health management systems, including stress check programs, labor management frameworks, and compliance-oriented mental health policies. Under the institutional condition of evaluation and responsibility structures centered on suppressing stress occurrence and managing only visible and measurable stress domains, individually rational behavior systematically converges not toward the resolution of accumulated stress but toward the non-disclosure, invisibilization, and responsibility avoidance of stress. As these behaviors accumulate, they alter visibility conditions and responsibility structures themselves, resulting in the structural invisibilization of stress accumulation and reinforcing the same behavioral convergence through a recursive institutional feedback loop. The pattern ultimately produces the persistence of unresolved stress accumulation despite apparent compliance and indicator optimization, indicating a structural misalignment between institutional objectives and rational behavioral adaptation. This paper analytically describes the structural relationship between institutional design and rational behavioral adaptation. The document does not propose policy implementation, funding structures, benefit levels, or normative policy judgments, but instead presents design principles and operational modules as analytical references for institutional design.
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Hiromi Shimamoto (2026) studied this question.
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