Australian researchers have developed a mobile application to monitor and improve the mental health of taxi drivers.<\/p>\n
Researchers from the University of Melbourne developed the app after a study discovered that taxi drivers were among the most stressed people in a workplace, Xinhua news agency reported.<\/p>\n
The study found that two in three taxi drivers reported high levels of psychological distress due to long working hours and the prospect of being assaulted by passengers.<\/p>\n
Nearly a third of drivers surveyed rated their physical health as poor, twice the average for Australian men.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all used to messages about cutting the road toll, but there\u2019s another road toll that is unique to taxi drivers\u2014the mental and physical health hazards they face on the job,\u201d Sandra Davidson from the University of Melbourne\u2019s Department of General Practice said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaxi drivers are mostly male, shift workers, recently arrived in Australia, and either too time poor or reluctant to seek help,\u201d Davidson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest challenge is enabling taxi drivers themselves to make small but important changes to their routines, given that they have lots of \u2018dead\u2019 time that they can\u2019t do much with, because they have to get their next fare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davidson said the idea for the app came from survey findings that taxi drivers were spending large amounts of time on their smartphones but were unlikely to seek mental health help.<\/p>\n
IANS<\/strong><\/p>\n Picture source: Alamy<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Picture used for illustrative purposes alone<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Australian researchers have developed a mobile application to monitor and improve the mental health of taxi drivers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31,91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2946,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2944\/revisions\/2946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}