By Michael Godfrey (MSc 2018/19)

Wall Street Traders are a little researched and little understood population. Perceptions of such individuals are often hostile and lacking in empathy, with depictions often focused on the wealthy, decadent lifestyles of the people who make money, making money.

But Traders don’t seem to live the easy lives the media might portray them as having. What little research has been conducted on them has suggested that they work incredibly long hours and deal with significant levels of stress¹, linked to sudden market swings and fluctuations in PNL (Profit and Loss). This often leads to poor mental health and greater alcohol consumption than standard professions², and a growing interest in mindfulness meditation practices on Wall Street³ indicates that Traders are seeking new ways to manage the challenges of their work. One such mindfulness informed programme, which could provide both value to traders and insight for scholars, is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

ACT:

ACT is an evidence-based model of therapy, rooted in language research and mindfulness practice, aimed at increasing an individual’s ‘Psychological Flexibility’. Psychological flexibility is an individual’s ability to be more present in their immediate surroundings, responding to situations appropriately and guided by what really matters to them⁴.

ACT does this by helping people accept the thoughts and feelings they find challenging, to distance themselves from restrictive and unnecessary limitations they place on themselves and to ‘ACT’ to achieve goals that are truly meaningful to them.

And ACT seems to do this very well. Research has found that ACT training is beneficial for all sorts of psychological problems, including stress, depression and anxiety⁵. But as yet, no such research has explored ACT with Wall Street Trader populations. A recent study set out to rectify this.

The Research:

To explore how Wall Street traders feel about ACT, and to understand their experience of work more generally, researchers conducted a short, ‘taster’ ACT workshop with a small population of traders. The session introduced the traders to some of the theory behind ACT, the research that supports it and provided them with direct experience of some of the techniques ACT uses to help participants contact what matters to them.

After completing the training session, five of the traders were invited to take part in brief interviews, lasting between 20 – 40 minutes. These interviews asked questions about the trader’s experiences of the session, their work and personal lives, and how they felt the training might be relevant to them.

Researchers then performed a type of analysis called ‘Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis’ (IPA) on the interview responses. IPA is a type of analysis that tries to understand people’s lived experiences, their interpretation of situations and the meaning and importance they find in them. By analysing individual trader responses, the researchers were able to identify three key patterns in the data, called Master Themes. These themes were: Stress and Emotional Fluctuation, Attitudes in the Work Culture and Goal Attainment.

The Master Themes:

1. Stress and Emotional Fluctuation

One of the most evident themes in the responses the Traders provided, was the consistent pressure of stress and challenging emotional experiences inherent to their work. The volatile and unpredictable markets that the Traders worked with meant that the traders emotional states and stress levels were never consistent, sometimes feeling great before suddenly crashing down when things went wrong.

It was clear that these experiences were challenging for the traders, both in the unpleasantness of having such unstable emotions, but also in how they affected the trader’s ability to do their jobs. There was a keen sense that a more stable emotional outlook would help the traders perform better in their jobs.

• Attitudes in the Work Culture

Indeed, performance seemed to be a key priority for the traders and for the industry at large. The second master theme explored how the traders seemed to prioritise performance above all else, including their own personal well-being. While some felt that their well-being was important and contributed to their performance, there was a sense among others that well-being would take a back seat to doing well in the job.

This was described in relation to how the training session would be perceived in the industry. Many of the traders described a need for the ‘hard numbers’, facts and figures that could show the training would provide value in improving their performance, helping them achieve more in their roles.

• Goal Attainment

Achievement typified the third and final theme, Goal Attainment. An aspect of the training the traders seemed to identify with was its potential for helping them overcome their own limitations and achieve their goals. Several of the traders felt that the way they thought about certain things held them back from achieving certain goals, with the training offering a fresh perspective on achieving them.

Several of the traders felt that by identifying the thoughts and behaviours that held them back, they were better able to decide on steps they could take to achieve the goals they’d chosen. These goals included developing social skills, learning new things, building their reputations and better managing how they responded to stressful situations.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this research provided some unique insight into the lives and experiences of Wall Street Traders. As a population working in a highly stressful environment and who have not been studied in detail before now, traders constitute a unique group of individuals whose experiences could shed light on research into well-being and performance in the work place.

Working in a highly performance and achievement driven environment, traders deal with continual stress and unstable emotions that impact their capacity to do their jobs. In this context, ACT could provide a valuable means of supporting traders to live, feel and perform to their very best.

Blog Reference List:

1: Khan, H., Cooper, C. L. & Elsey, S. P. (1994). Financial Dealers on Wall Street and in the City of London – Is the Stress Different? Stress Medicine, 10, 93-100.

2: Khan, G. & Cooper, C. L. (1990). Mental Health, Job Satisfaction, Alcohol Intake and Occupational Stress Among Dealers in Financial Markets. Stress Medicine, 6, 285-298.

3: Burton, Katherine. & Effinger, Anthony. To Make a Killing on Wall Street, Start Meditating. Bloomberg Online. 28 May 2014. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-28/to-make-killing-on-wall-street-start-meditating Accessed at: 01/09/19

4: Hayes, S. C. (2004). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Relational Frame Theory and the Third Wave of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies. Behaviour Therapy, 35, 639-665.

5: Ruiz, F. J. (2010). A review of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) empirical evidence: Correlational, experimental psychopathology, component and outcome studies. International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy, 10, 125-162

By Esther Shalom (MSc 2019/20)

The conception of this paper emerged from my own personal struggles working as a midwife. There has been many a time where I’ve come very close to giving it all up, and I know deep inside that I may yet capitulate. This MSc is something I envisioned to be a stepping-stone to another profession, a backup to open more employment opportunities for when the day comes that I will need them.

I am not alone. This, the statistics make very clear. The data presented my paper proves there are many just like me, devoted midwives who will still leave their posts due to insurmountable work pressures and the effect of this on their wellbeing. Midwives are leaving their profession in increasing numbers due to enormous workloads and not being able to be the midwife they want to be, or to provide the care they want to provide. The emotional cost of working as a midwife in the UK is proving to be too much for many, with numerous studies describing the toll on the mental health of midwives. There is a perpetuating vicious circle in process, whereby short-staffing leads to greater work pressures which pushes midwives to leave, resulting in further short-staffing. The rates of depression and anxiety in UK midwives are high, and those newly qualified suffer most acutely. The future of my profession lies on the shoulders of these young midwives, many of whom are buckling under the pressure.

My decision was to interview and examine the experiences and perceptions of midwives with great experience in their fields. While there is a lot of good literature that considers the midwives who have left, there is no research that focuses solely on the experiences of those most experienced. Yet these are the midwives who have seen it all over the course of their careers and still remain in place. To me, they are the rocks who guided and supported me through my own training and my time as a newly qualified midwife. They have looked on as many of the ones they have taught alongside me made the decision to quit. They are a bastion of strength and wisdom and it was a natural choice to explore their opinions of what I see to be a coming crisis in UK midwifery.

Much of the data elicited in this study was very similar to what is known from the research into the midwives who have left; they spoke of the same great workloads and emotional distress. What they did bring to the fore is the worry they have for the midwives who will remain once they leave, fearing they will leave the profession in a deteriorating state. This finding, although perhaps predictable, was still poignant. Midwifery truly is a vocation more than just a job, and the midwives would still care for it once they had gone. The passion for midwifery is not something would expire with their retirement.

The vocational aspect of midwifery is also something that seems to contribute to midwifery staff attrition. Midwives are attracted to the job due to their vocational ideals of wanting to care for women and babies on a woman-centred basis, and they leave the job once they realise that woman-centred care is not possible. The inability to provide good quality care is something described by the midwives in this essay as causing them to feel unhappy in their jobs, something which all the relevant literature easily backs up.

The inability to provide woman-centred care is also something that calls into question the status of UK midwifery. Midwifery, by definition, is about being present with childbearing women, providing individualised, or woman centred care. To be a midwife is to be, according to the true meaning of the word, ‘with woman’. Are UK midwives working in a profession that can still be recognised as midwifery in the accepted sense of the word? Given that midwives seem no longer able to provide real woman-centred care, the answer is up for debate.

Most importantly, this paper picked up on the problem that is inadequate training and support of students and new recruits. In a profession rapidly falling to disrepair, surely there can be nothing more important than to focus on the support and appropriate training of new blood? This is not something that is generally seen as a priority within the midwifery literature, which in itself is surprising and concerning. The greatest recommendation and contribution this paper can make is to emphasise the need for better midwifery education and support. There can be no more important step in building a better future in a workforce that is swiftly declining and retiring.

The other recommendation this paper makes would be to bring UK midwives back to the provision of woman-centred care, which is to say, bring midwives back to being midwives again. This is easier said than done and can possibly only be considered once the acute levels of short staffing have been resolved. It remains an important vision for midwifery to turn to, as keeping midwives in the business of midwifery will, well, keep midwives in the business of midwifery. 

The biggest struggle of completing this paper was balancing the fine line between my passion for midwifery and the pursuit of an impartial piece of research. It is a balance I am still not sure I got right, and the night before handing in this paper saw me going through it all, removing the parts that mirrored my feelings perhaps too strongly, or came over a little too ardently. I may have cut out too much, or maybe, not enough. I have tried to let the data speak for itself as much as possible, and when looking at the data, it tells a story very similar to my own, in perhaps a far more compelling manner than I ever could. Midwives, and midwifery need saving, and soon. Happily, the wisdom and optimism of my participants tells me this is something that can yet be accomplished.