Psychologically and biochemically assessed stress in a follow-up study of long-term unemployed

Abstract

It has been suggested that psychological stress is one of the reasons for the high morbidity among unemployed people in Western countries. The same may apply to the well-documented high mortality. It would be expected that increased levels of biological stress would be found in these people. In the present study a sample of 310 long-term unemployed people from Norway was followed for 2 years. Psychologcal stress was assessed by medical examination and by the psychometric tests GHQ-28 and HSCL-30, the latter compared with a reference population of employed people. Serum levels of cortisol, prolactin and testosterone, together with immunoglobulins IgA, IgG and IgM, were compared with working controls. The unemployed had a high level of psychological distress at the first examination, the sanie for men and women. At the 2-year follow up distress was reduced by re-employment. This fits the ‘causation hypothesis' which explains the high distress level as caused by unemployment. The other direction of causation, ‘the selection hypothesis', assuming that distressed persons have an increased chance of continuous unemployment, was also confirmed in the present study. As for biological stress, significant differences were not found between the unemployment, the re-employed and the working controls.     

Endocrine markers during a job intervention

An intervention consisting of a thorough examination of the psychological worksite problems and a follow-up with feedback and recommendations was made in four different office worksites. One of the sites («active» group) was more organizational change-oriented than the others («passive» group). The course was followed before, three times during the 3 months of the intervention, and 4 months after the end of it, by means of three endocrine plasma markers: cortisol, prolactin and testosterone. In both study groups the prolactin levels increased in women during the starting phase of the intervention, whereas in men prolactin levels remained stable with a tendency (p=0.06) towards lowered prolactin levels during the end phase of the intervention in the active group. Cortisol levels increased markedly in the passive group and tended to decrease in the active group during the intervention (two-way interaction p=0.003), particularly in men. These findings may be indicative of feelings of uneasiness. Testosterone increased in the active group only, particularly at the beginning of the intervention and particularly in women, and also increased in a non-intervention control group. Testosterone levels are associated with anabolic activity. An increase may be indicative of a «placebo effect» of the intervention. Testosterone changes were still clearly observable after 4 months.     

Psychologically and biochemically assessed stress in a follow-up study of long-term unemployed

It has been suggested that psychological stress is one of the reasons for the high morbidity among unemployed people in Western countries. The same may apply to the well-documented high mortality. It would be expected that increased levels of biological stress would be found in these people. In the present study a sample of 310 long-term unemployed people from Norway was followed for 2 years. Psychologcal stress was assessed by medical examination and by the psychometric tests GHQ-28 and HSCL-30, the latter compared with a reference population of employed people. Serum levels of cortisol, prolactin and testosterone, together with immunoglobulins IgA, IgG and IgM, were compared with working controls. The unemployed had a high level of psychological distress at the first examination, the sanie for men and women. At the 2-year follow up distress was reduced by re-employment. This fits the 'causation hypothesis' which explains the high distress level as caused by unemployment. The other direction of causation, 'the selection hypothesis', assuming that distressed persons have an increased chance of continuous unemployment, was also confirmed in the present study. As for biological stress, significant differences were not found between the unemployment, the re-employed and the working controls.     

A psychosocial and biomedical comparison between men in six contrasting service occupations

A study of psychosocial job factors and physiological states was conducted using 150 men, aged between 25 and 60, working in six widely different occupations—freight handlers, aircraft mechanics, air traffic controllers, physicians, waiters and symphony musicians. The aim of the study was to characterize any differences in physiological parameters in relation to differences in psychosocial job characteristics. Analyses of variance were used to test differences between groups. The results indicated that waiters, the group reporting the most unfavourable working conditions, tended to have many cardiovascular risk factors. Physicians, who had relatively few cardiovascular risk factors, reported high decision latitude and many emotional reactions in their daily life and had relatively high cortisol and low prolactin levels in plasma.