Samenvatting
Mental Load and Stress Summary
- Instelling
- Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RU)
All the lectures and articles are in the summary. I tried to color code the weeks and include pictures.
[Meer zien]Voorbeeld 4 van de 44 pagina's
Voorbeeld 4 van de 44 pagina's
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Voorbeeld van de inhoud
Mental Load and StressLecture 1 - Societal and Theoretical Background
• Disciplines: Biological psychology, cognitive psychology, work & Organizational Psychology
• Covid substantially impacts stress and mental health (especially for health care workers)
• Lack of knowledge, lack of coping, worrying, job loss
• Costs of work stress = High (burnout, sickness days, decreased performance)
• Many suffering form (burnout) complaints/disabilities due to work related mental complaints
• Rising retirement age —> older employees kept longer in job market (how are people able &
willing to do that?)
• Changes in organizations of work + changes in work characteristics (e.g. change from physical
—> online), new struggles/responsibilities
• Stress is not by definition bad (evolutionary function, arousal might be helpful)
Changes in work and work characteristics (Michiel Kompier)
• Saunter et al introduce 3-level concept of organization at work: external context (e.g.economy),
organizational context (e.g. management structures), work context (job characteristics)
• Increasing work in offices & service, less in agriculture
• Form physical to mental (emotional demands, interpersonal/cognitive skills)
• Increased internationalization: increased competition, mergers, reorganization, demands for
efficiency —> job insecurity, stress (cardiovascular & musculoskeletal problems)
• New technology: more comfort/speed/performance, interesting work with high task demands
and autonomy, amplifies and creates problems, physical complaints, de-skilling, high cognitive
demands/information overflow, less social interaction/support/feedback (email), change from
physical demands to mental ones (movement poverty), blurred work-home boundaries (can
work anytime/anywhere), serious damage if mistakes made (security software shooting plane)
• Performance management: management based on result instead of time
• Different composition of the working population: e.g. more women/older employees/
migrants/well-educated people, more dual earning famalies, imbalance between work-family
(more negative influence of work on family/fatigue/mental health) —> predicted by high
demands, low autonomy, low support (laws/regulations at organizational level to prevent)
• Flexibility: stay ‚employable‘ (qualitative - constantly develop themselves), maximizing
performance, minimizing costs, versatile use of employees/time/means, overtime work
(extreme, involuntary) & temporary contracts (quantitative)
• Flexible contracts: worse conditions, invest less in their training/development, less job
security, high work speed, low control over workplace
• Overtime work: quantitative flexibility, adjust labor flexibly to an increase in demand,
associated with adverse health & injuries, moderate overtime related to motivation/ attractive
job characteristics & happy employees, recovery opportunities/incidental vs. chronic/pay
choice and number of hours are crucial characteristics
• Functional flexibility: work practices that enable fast responses to changes (e.g. multi skilled
team), numeric flexibility (e.g.temporary employees), geographic flexibility: work where it can
be done most effectively (e.g. production across different countries), job based flexibility:
better psychological job characteristics so employees can control problems as they arise
• Higher prevalence of night work —> increased work related violence
• Populations in poorer & less developed countries largely understudied
Greatest risk: contingent,
National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) recommendations temporary, undocumented
a) Improved surveillance & monitoring of how work is changing low socioeconomic
b) Research on safety & health implications background workers
c) Interventions to protect safety & health
d) Formalize work as a distinctive field in occupational health & safety
What is stress - different approaches
• Stressor: events/set of conditions that cause stress response (e.g. workload)
• Stress: short term response to the stressor (e.g. feeling anxious, high blood pressure)
• Strain: longer term reaction to chronic stress (e.g. burnout)
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,Definitions
• Discrepancy/imbalance between what you should do (demands) and what you can do (capability)
• Interaction between person & environment, what is a stressor for one person is not necessarily
causing stress for another person
• Feeling of high arousal and displeasure (subjective), psychological & physiological processes
Approaches of stress
• Biology: stress as a response
• Stress = non-specific response of the body to demand
• Non-specific arousal in reaction to all situations that demand mobilization of energy (no
distinction between positive/negative) => by Selye
• Later made distinction between Eustress (positive) & Yerkes-Dodson Law
Distress (negative)
• General Adaption Syndrome (Selye): developed in
reaction to certain situations, basic physiological
reaction same regardless of stressor
• Alarm: initial fight-or flight response
• Resistance: adaption to stressor on outside
(physiological processes still happening)
• Exhaustion: persistent stress —> susceptibility to
illness and death
• Criticism: some stressful physical conditions don’t
produce 3 stages, recent approaches emphasize
psychological processes
• Epidemiology - engineering approach: Stress as a characteristic of the environment
• Stress = force/ pressure on person (!stressor!), Psychosocial aspects = stress
• Strain reaction: the greater the strain, the larger the reaction (undemanding situations = not stressful)
• Holmes & Rohe: Social Readjustment Rating Scale
• Emotionally distressing life events associated with disease (stressful, require adjustment)
• List of (43) events that might happen in a persons life, that were rated by people on how
much readjustment is needed (compared to marriage)
• Asked people how many of the events people experienced in the last year = the more
events the more stress related complaints
• Criticism: very subjective, does not acknowledge interpersonal differences or that some
events are generally considered more positive/negative than others (marriage vs.
divorce), reliability & validity of questionnaire is low, retrospective responding difficult,
unclear whether major life events do cause physical disease (may be strongly linked to
psychological outcomes), some more vulnerable to stressors (diathesis stress model)
• Brown & Harris: Life Events and Difficulties Scale
• Structured interviews for details of events & context —> rated for threat by trained raters
• Stress not assumed to increase with each additional event, any single event meeting
threshold put person at risk for disease
• Psychology: Stress as interaction
• Person feels Environment exceeds resources, people differ in way they experience & cope
• Transactional theory - Lazarus: interaction between situation & person results in a primary
appraisal (e.g. I hate giving a presentation in front of an audience —> appraisal = negative/
threatening), then there is a secondary appraisal of the persons coping options —> stress can
develop when the appraisal is negative/threatening —> Coping —> Re-appraisal
• Suggest that focus on major life changes ignores fact that much stress stems form daily
hassles (chronic daily problems), Hassle Scale: rate to which extend item is hassle / uplift
(criticism: items symptoms rather than causes, instruction implies a certain level of distress)
• Stress not property of environment nor individual , not just a single variable
• Hassle harmful by affecting physiological pathways an changes in health behavior (smoking,
physical activity, self-care), Daily hassle more important than life events in predicting change
• Karasek Job Control Questionnaire: job stress = high work demand + low personal control
• Global appraisal (e.g. perceived stress scale): degree to which people feel demands in
exceed abilities to cope effectively
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,Conservation of resources model
• Resource based model of stress (resources not demands variable of importance)
• More objective approach (resources objectively observable)
• Stress as a reaction to (threatened) loss or failure to gain resources following an investment of resources
• In absence of stress we build resources
• Resource loss greater impact than resource gain
• Highlights proactive coping
• Resources cluster together (resource caravans) and carry over into future times
• Resources = predictor of resilience
• Theory often seen as a challenge to Lazarus theory, theories differ in emphasize (Lazarus -> appraisal &
subjective resources, Hobfoll objective resources)
• Stress as a process (Contemporary physiological approaches to stress) Cohen et al (model)
• Distinctions between short-term & long-term consequences
(physiological&psychological)
• Situation —> disruption —> recovery or cumulation —> (in case of
cumulation) illness
• McEwen’s & Stellar Allostatic load theory:
• How stress can cause illness over a lifetime / long-term impact of stress
• Homeostasis: balance between sympathetic & parasympathetic nervous
system
• Allostasis: functional changes in balance because demands from
environment have to be met (adapting), not necessarily problematic
• Allostatic load: physical/mental costs of disrupted balance (bad), stress
repose that is not being terminated
• Casques of Allostatic loads: Repeated hits, lack of adaptation, prolonged
response (rumination), inadequate response (e.g. no response of stress
system —> other systems have to work harder —> eventually allostatic
load)
A stage model of Stress and Disease (Cohen et al)
• ‚stress’ Helpful to integrate traditions (epidemiology, psychology, biology) that
emphasize different stages of the process in linking stressful events to disease
• Epidemiological: circumstances, experience, implies that a specific life event
generates equivalent amount of stress for all individuals & that stress is
cumulative (each event adding to burden), certain events enough to create
substantial levels of threat (social roles, interpersonal relationships)
• Psychological: subjective perception of stress, appraisal (demands,
resources, coping, controllability, intensity) same event not stressful for all
• Biological: physiological systems that get maladaptive when active long term (Selye), HPA
axis, automatic nervous system, cortisol, SAM mediators, epinephrine, norepinephrine (no
agreed-upon thresholds), stressful events can lead to cellular changes (—>disease)
• ‚stress‘ used inconsistently across disciplines which makes it difficult to understand research —
> stress should be: set of constructs representing stages in process where environmental
demands that (may) exceed the individuals adaptive capacity places a person at risk for disease
• Environmental demands —> brain-based stress appraisal —> affective response (HPA,…) &
health impairing behaviors (impulsive) —> coping behaviors & emotional response —> disease
risk
• Each component of process more proximal and predictive of illness outcomes
• Feedback loops and other mechanisms may play a role
What is stress?
1) Results from an important situation (exam)
2) Inability/unwillingness to retreat from the situation (have to take an exam)
3) Feeling of loss of control
4) High arousal, distracting thoughts, emotions
—> stress is an ambiguous concept (4 different approaches), distinction between stressor-stress-
strain, relevance of studying mental load & stress
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, Individual Differences
• Stressors can impact risk of coronary heart disease or immune functioning
• Social support and personality (perfectionistic) influence risk
• Stress reactivity (size of physiological response)
• Stress recovery (time to return to normal state)
• When young recovery swift, as we age it gets less well controlled
• McEwen: longer post-stress recovery may develop as a result of wear & tear to
cardiovascular system caused by body having to frequently respond to stress over decades
• Perseverative cognition hypothesis: worry, rumination & repetitive thinking lead to disease by
prolonging stress-related physiological activation & amplifying short-term responses
Individual Consequences of stress
• Distress —> negative well-being, Eustress —> positive well-being
• Burden of suffering: death (mortality) and disease (morbidity)
• Stress plays role in 7/10 leading casques of death (heart disease, cancer, stroke, injuries,
suicide/homicide, chronic liver disease, chronic bronchitis
• Women more stress and pressure from jobs (especially in male-dominated industries)
• Early warning signs/symptoms of stress: irritability/anger, fatigue, lack of interest/motivation,
nervousness, anxiety, headache, feeling depressed, crying, upset stomach, tension, change in
appetite, extreme change in sex drive, tightness in chest, dizziness
• Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) => number of years of life lost & number of years lived with
disability
• Behavioral distress: Tobacco abuse, Alcohol abuse (numbing, can lead to accidents, birth
defects, decreased productivity, worse judgement, downward stress spiral, medical issues &
violence), drug abuse, accidents & aggression (workplace violence, bullying), dietary extremes
• Psychological Distress: anxiety (acute stress disorder, PTSD, Panic disorder), burnout
(negative affective response —> reduced physical health, job satisfaction & productivity,
increased absenteeism & turnover), depression, chronic-sleep disturbance (may lead to
excessive use of caffeinated liquids, nicotine, alcohol consumption), family problems (trends of
dual earning partners —> conflict, travel, 24/7 communication device), sexual dysfunction
(reduced sex hormones, women = temporary infertility)
• Medical distress: coronary heart disease/stroke (tobacco, blood cholesterol, high blood
pressure, physical inactivity, obesity), cancer (smoking, immune system, ‚coping‘ strategies),
Pain and musculoskeletal injuries (stress —> delayed recovery/return to work), headache (shifts,
noise, odors), Diabetes mellitus (obesity and physical inactivity, stress related hormone change
increase blood glucose for fast energy)
• Burnout
• Risk: high degree of personal investment, high performance expectations, emotionally
demanding situations, strong commitment to work (self-image, sense of worth)
• Burnout as a process: Emotional exhaustion (depletion of emotional resources),
Depersonalization (attempt to cope, negative attitudes about recipients of ones service),
reduced personal accomplishment (reduced satisfaction, sense for competence)
• Prevalent in advanced market economies
• Precursor of depressive symptoms
Location of stress
• Segerstrom & O’Connor suggested
identifying where stress is located is
important to improve
conceptualization and assessment
• Stress can have different locations
(environment, appraisal, response)
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