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| |  Job Strain Among Working Women Linked To Anger, Depression CHICAGO -- June 12, 1997 -- Health-damaging psychosocial factors such as hostility, depression and social isolation are common among women reporting high levels of job stress, according to an article in the June issue of the AMA's Archives of General Psychiatry. Redford B. Williams, M.D., and colleagues from Duke University Medical School, Durham, N.C., studied 152 women employed by a corporation in the Durham area. Ninety-four women worked in customer service; the other 58 processed paperwork. The women were given confidential questionnaires measuring job stress and psychological factors. The study focused on white- and blue-collar jobs requiring workers to complete a great deal of work in too short a time and also on jobs in which employees do a lot of repetitive work while not being allowed to make decisions on their own, to learn new skills or to develop special abilities. "Any intervention that can reduce the distress associated with high job strain has the potential for immediate benefits in reduced use of costly medical services,” the researchers conclude. “Even more important, there is reason to expect that interventions effective in reducing this psychosocial distress will also lead to a reduced incidence of debilitating medical problems during the long-term." The researchers found a consistently adverse profile among workers reporting higher levels of job strain. "Psychologically, they are more depressed, anxious, angry, neurotic and hostile than their counterparts reporting lower levels of job strain. They also show reduced levels of a positive trait, curiosity." "Workers with a high level of job strain also reported less of a sense of belonging, and they had a preponderance of negative compared with positive dealing with co-workers and supervisors encountered at this particular work site," they write. The study also found that workers under high levels of job stress felt their sources of social support were less adequate to meet their emotional needs or enhance their self-esteem. Past research has found that hostility, depression, anxiety and low levels of social support or social isolation can increase the risk of coronary heart disease, death after heart attacks and other adverse health outcomes. Williams and colleagues point out that the health consequences can be even more damaging when two or more psychosocial risk factors are present. "The clustering of increased depression, anxiety, anger, hostility and social isolation found among the working women reporting high job strain in this study suggests, therefore, that women who perceive their jobs as high in strain will be at particularly high risk for a range of health problems." The researchers point out that smoking, over-eating, increased alcohol consumption and other risk behaviors have been found among people exhibiting the same psychosocial profile as women reporting high job strain in this study. They also assert that psychosocial distress, in the absence of objective medical illness, is responsible for many patient visits to primary care physicians.
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