Workplace Stress

Psychologists will share the success of their ground-breaking back-to-work programme for the long term unemployed, Skills4Success, today, 13th January 2010, at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology Annual Conference in Brighton

Chartered Psychologist Nancy Doyle will present the results and techniques used in the Skills4Success programme, which uses the latest psychological techniques to help its unemployed participants take control of their careers and acquire gainful employment.. [continue reading…]

Top 10 Tips for Stress-free geeks

computer nerdTo mark Stress Free Awareness Day today a technologist at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), has revealed her Top 10 Tips to help technology geeks to deal with stress.Today is Stress Free Awareness Day!

dr mc schraefel (lower case intentional I’m not sure why!), whose main research area is Human Computer Interaction (HCI), feels strongly that technologists and others who spend all day working at computers need to be aware of the negative effects that stress can have on their bodies and their capacity for productive work.

‘People who use technology intensively have a tendency to end up hunched over their computers,’ said schraefel. ‘Often without realising it they adopt a ‘threat response’, clenching all their muscles, which makes it difficult for them to unwind later.
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A Swedish study published in one of the latest issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics discloses new relationships between stress at work and development of rheumatoid arthritis.

Psychosocial work stress, in terms of high psychological demands, low decision latitude or the combination of these stressors (job strain), is associated with an increased risk of several diseases (e.g. cardiovascular disease), but it has not been studied in relation to rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, research on the relationship between psychosocial work stress and immunological parameters also suggests a possible association with inflammatory conditions, including RA. In order to investigate whether high psychological job demands, low decision latitude and job strain are associated with the risk of developing RA, a group of Swedish investigators used data from EIRA, a large population-based case-control study with incident cases of RA. The study base comprised the population, aged 18–65 years, in middle and southern parts of Sweden during 1996–2003. In total, 1,221 cases and 1,454 controls participated. [continue reading…]