It is not enough simply to find work stressful. To succeed in bringing a claim, a Claimant must be able to prove that he or she has become affected by high levels of stress as a direct result of the employer’s behaviour. In the 2005 case of Suzanne Vahidi v Fairstead House School Trust, a teacher failed in her claim for damages. The Court held that she had suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of her own attempts to change her methods of teaching, not because of any lack of support by the school

 There must also be a pattern of events which put the employer ‘on notice’ that a stressful situation needs to be addressed. In another 2005 case a claimant failed to win compensation for this very reason. The Court could not find any evidence of any ‘incidents’which might have alerted his employer to his condition. The only complaints made by the Claimant had been of a general nature, nothing specifically dealing with health.