The Effects of Occupational Stress on Physical Health and its Consequences

At the psychological level, stressful and poor working conditions can cause continuing feelings of humiliation, insecurity and worthlessness. Not having a secure understanding of the future can cause large amounts of anxiety and futility that roots high levels of fatigue from day-to-day life, therefore making everyday coping difficult. Individuals who experience high levels of prolonged stress often attempt to relieve these pressures by adopting unhealthy coping behaviours; for example, the excessive use of alcohol, smoking, and

Introduction Stress affects millions of people. One of the most common forms of stress is that related to our careers and the workplace. In today 's economic difficulty, work related stress is even more pronounced than ever before. Everyone who has ever held a job has, felt the pressure of work-related stress. Any job can have stressful elements, even if you love what you do. According to the American Psychological Association 's (APA) annual Stress in America Survey. Only 37 percent of Americans surveyed said they were doing

Society defines stress as anything which forces us to change. Through technical terms stress is defined as “a negative emotional state occurring in response to events that are perceived as taking or exceeding a person’s resources or ability to cope.” To explaining stress researchers came up with the “Cognitive appraisal model”, this system works to tell us whether we believe we have enough resources to deal with the situation without becoming stressed. For instance as a now college student those who have had previous experience taking finales in high school can have less stress than those who have not taken it. This is because they have previous experience with taking the tests and learning how to study while those who have never taken one can become extremely stressed over the unknown of the test. Stress is one of the sub branches that is attached to the world of health psychology. Health psychology is a quickly growing branch that deals with the way the mind and body work together. Psychologists that work in the health field came up with the biopsychosocial model. This model explains the complex interaction with biological, psychological, and social factors.

People are increasingly facing more stress since the Human-Being society became developed and complicated, by ignoring the physical influence to our body, Human’s health suffered considerably from stress. Many people was suggested to solve the stress problem by using psychological approaches, however, the research in recent decades has identified a significant awareness gap between the benefits of physical activities and stress relief. The following paper is aiming at exploring how stress affects physical health and how to relieve stress physically.

46. A burnout syndrome workplace health care: A study with the professional team of nursing hospitals.

All of the definitions of burnout mention the main factor of burnout to be stress. Pamela Patrick, in her book about Health Care Worker Burnout, defined burnout as “the feeling of emotional exhaustion, a negative attitude shift, and a sense of personal devaluation that occurs over time and in relation to high stress work environment”. Whiton Paine in his book on job stress and burnout used the concept of burnout stress syndrome, or BOSS, which is due to “high levels of job stress, personal frustration and inadequate coping skills”.

Stress has been linked to hypertension, heart attacks, diabetes, asthma, chronic pain, allegeries, headaches, skin disorders, cancer, immune system weakness and decrease blood count (Cummings et al, 2005). It has also been linked to an increase risk of alcoholism and drug use. High levels of stress can lead to higher absenteeism, larger staff turnover and low productivity. The symptoms are evident in the quantitative data, with an

Although the authors did not utilize the Maslach Burnout Inventory as compared to the two previous articles mentioned in this post, they utilized a questionnaire from the ICU nurses. The respondents’ answers were able to identify predictable factors of burnout syndrome among ICU nurses, which are: working in a closed environment, feeling alienated in a parallel world, and having no contact with the outside (Fernandes, Nitsche, & de Godoy, 2015). On the other hand, the authors were unclear about how these factors affected the respondents, as it was not mentioned in the article. Furthermore, more than half of the respondents state that they are able to deal with the activities they are designated and they are able to perform procedures they deem as important (Fernandes, Nitsche, & de Godoy, 2015). Unfortunately, the limitations to this article include majority of its information was written in Portuguese, and only the abstract was provided in the English

Studies have suggested work stress levels peak at age 50-55 years (Work Stress Peaks During Middle Age, 2015). Stress is usually handled by one of two ways – effective coping which leads to healthy lifestyle choices and stress response which usually leads to negative health factors (Depp & Jeste, 2010) like smoking, sleeping less, drinking more alcohol and developing poor nutrition habits. Stress is also found to enable developing of illnesses like Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease and diabetes (Alzheimer's Society, 2015).

Work related stress has been emerging as one of the main causes of adverse symptoms of mental health in today’s industrial societies. The direct result of excessive pressures and/or demands placed on individuals at work, work-related stress has caused some people to develop symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other adverse mental health effects. While it might be possible that other co-factors contribute to the development of anxiety and depression in some population groups, evidence suggests that pressure from works is more likely to trigger adverse reactions in some people. In fact, positive correlations have been established between symptoms of work stress and mental health problems. That is, it is not uncommon to witness loss of

In this paper I will discuss stress and the workplace stress survey from the American Institute of Stress and if left untreated, how it will negatively affect the workforce. I will explain the results of my survey scores and why I believe they are positive and negative. Additionally, I will describe personal examples of the stressors that are always at work and how to identify and overcome them before they cause irreparable damage.

Many believe that stress is a simple problem, however it is often misunderstood and more complex than they believe (p. 181, Griffin & Moorhead, 2014). Stress is the physiological and psychological response to excessive and usually unpleasant stimulation as well as threatening events in the environment (p. 284, Schultz and Schultz, 2010). Stress appears in silent and subtle ways but this negative response affects millions of employees in all levels of all types of jobs (p. 284, Schultz and Schultz, 2010). If identified

Hayes & Weathington (2007) cited the “National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health” as saying that job stress has developed into

Studies from different parts of the world made by different health organizations have showed that long working hours and pressured work lead to stress which affects the employees mentally and physically and leads indirectly to low productivity levels. Not only stress, but it can cause a lot more of health issues like extreme fatigue including sleepiness, poor concentration, and increased susceptibility to illness. These symptoms can a have a noticed effect on the general productivity of an organization.

Psychological stress is pressure placed on a person to adapt, cope, or adjust to a situation (Rathus, 2016, p.284). The result of prolonged stress can affect a person’s mood, pleasure experience, and have harmful effects on physical health (Rathus, 2016, p.284). Society in the twenty first century places high demands on people. Technology makes it very difficult to separate work life, school life, and home life. Today, society places a high value on a busy lifestyle for individuals. For example, many places of business are open twenty-four hours a day. In addition to societal pressures, attending a university adds to the stressors a person may experience. Going to school not only includes classroom time but it also includes homework,