Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Work Stress and Adverse Health Behaviors

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Handbook of Socioeconomic Determinants of Occupational Health

Part of the book series: Handbook Series in Occupational Health Sciences ((HDBSOHS))

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the evidence for the relationship of work-related psychosocial stress and adverse health behaviors, including tobacco smoking, drinking alcohol, and the low level of physical activity. There are several ways to measure and operationalize work-related psychosocial stress in research studies, and the measures commonly examined in relation to adverse health behaviors are job strain, effort-reward imbalance, job insecurity, and long working hours. The evidence summarized in this chapter suggests that work-related psychosocial stress co-occurs with smoking, excessive alcohol drinking, obesity, and low levels of physical activity. Longitudinal relationships between some indicators of work-related stress and some adverse health behaviors have also been observed. However, many studies in this area have had heterogeneous findings, and the interpretation of the available evidence is limited by the non-longitudinal study designs and the focus of the research effort in high-income countries.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Allard KO, Thomsen JF, Mikkelsen S et al (2011) Effects of psychosocial work factors on lifestyle changes: a cohort study. J Occup Environ Med/Am Coll Occup Environ Med 53(12):1364–1371. https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0b013e3182363bda

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Angrave D, Charlwood A, Wooden M (2015) Long working hours and physical activity. J Epidemiol Community Health 69:738. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2014-205230

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bannai A, Tamakoshi A (2014) The association between long working hours and health: a systematic review of epidemiological evidence. Scand J Work Environ Health 40(1):5–18. https://doi.org/10.5271/sjweh.3388

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Berrigan D, Dodd K, Troiano RP et al (2003) Patterns of health behavior in US adults. Prev Med 36(5):615–623. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0091-7435(02)00067-1

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cornelissen T (2007) Flexibility and security in the labour market. Labour market institutions and perceived job insecurity in Europe. International Labour Organisation (ILO, Subregional Office for Central and Eastern Europe). ISBN 9221205118, 9789221205111

    Google Scholar 

  • Escoto KH, Laska MN, Larson N et al (2012) Work hours and perceived time barriers to healthful eating among young adults. Am J Health Behav 36(6):786–796. https://doi.org/10.5993/AJHB.36.6.6

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • European Commission (2014) Working conditions – working time directive 2014

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferrie JE, Shipley MJ, Marmot MG et al (1998) An uncertain future: the health effects of threats to employment security in white-collar men and women. Am J Public Health 88(7):1030–1036

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferrie JE, Shipley MJ, Stansfeld SA et al (2002) Effects of chronic job insecurity and change in job security on self reported health, minor psychiatric morbidity, physiological measures, and health related behaviours in British civil servants: the Whitehall II study. J Epidemiol Community Health 56(6):450–454

    Google Scholar 

  • Fingret A (2000) Occupational mental health: a brief history. Occup Med (Oxford, England) 50(5):289–293

    Google Scholar 

  • Fransson EI, Heikkila K, Nyberg ST et al (2012) Job strain as a risk factor for leisure-time physical inactivity: an individual-participant meta-analysis of up to 170,000 men and women: the IPD-Work Consortium. Am J Epidemiol 176(12):1078–1089

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • French S, Rosenberg M, Knuiman M (2008) The clustering of health risk behaviours in a Western Australian adult population. Health Promot J Austr 19(3):203–209

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenberg J (2004) Stress fairness to fare no stress: managing workplace stress by promoting organizational justice. Organ Dyn 33(4):352–365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2004.09.003

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guo YL, Lin YC, Tsai MJ et al (2006) Depression and alcohol abuse among firefighters associated with job stress and effort reward imbalance. Epidemiology (Cambridge, MA) 16:S174. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001648-200611001-00439

  • Hartley J, Jacobson D, Klandermans B et al (1990) Job insecurity: coping with jobs at risk. SAGE, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Head J, Stansfeld SA, Siegrist J (2004) The psychosocial work environment and alcohol dependence: a prospective study. Occup Environ Med 61(3):219–224

    Google Scholar 

  • Heikkilä K, Nyberg ST, Fransson EI et al (2012a) Job strain and tobacco smoking: an individual-participant data meta-analysis of 166 130 adults in 15 European studies. PLoS One 7(7):e35463

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heikkilä K, Nyberg ST, Fransson EI et al (2012b) Job strain and alcohol intake: a collaborative meta-analysis of individual-participant data from 140 000 men and women. PLoS One 7(7):e40101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heikkila K, Fransson EI, Nyberg ST et al (2013) Job strain and health-related lifestyle: findings from an individual-participant meta-analysis of 118,000 working adults. Am J Public Health 103(11):2090–2097. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2012.301090

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Jachens L, Houdmont J, Thomas R (2016) Effort-reward imbalance and heavy alcohol consumption among humanitarian aid workers. J Stud Alcohol Drugs 77(6):904–913

    Google Scholar 

  • Karasek R, Theorell T (1990) Healthy work: stress, productivity, and the reconstruction of working life. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirk MA, Rhodes RE (2011) Occupation correlates of adults’ participation in leisure-time physical activity: a systematic review. Am J Prev Med 40(4):476–485. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2010.12.015

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kivimaki M, Leino-Arjas P, Luukkonen R et al (2002) Work stress and risk of cardiovascular mortality: prospective cohort study of industrial employees. BMJ (Clinical research ed) 325(7369):–857

    Google Scholar 

  • Kouvonen A, Kivimaki M, Cox SJ et al (2005a) Job strain, effort-reward imbalance, and heavy drinking: a study in 40,851 employees. J Occup Environ Med/Am Coll Occup Environ Med 47(5):503–513

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kouvonen A, Kivimaki M, Cox SJ et al (2005b) Relationship between work stress and body mass index among 45,810 female and male employees. Psychosom Med 67(4):577–583

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kouvonen A, Kivimaki M, Virtanen M et al (2006) Effort-reward imbalance at work and the co-occurrence of lifestyle risk factors: cross-sectional survey in a sample of 36,127 public sector employees. BMC Public Health 6:24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kouvonen A, Vahtera J, Elovainio M et al (2007) Organisational justice and smoking: the Finnish public sector study. J Epidemiol Community Health 61(5):427–433. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2007.061739

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Kouvonen A, Kivimaki M, Elovainio M et al (2008) Low organisational justice and heavy drinking: a prospective cohort study. Occup Environ Med 65(1):44–50. https://doi.org/10.1136/oem.2007.032755

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lee S, McCann D, Messenger JC (eds) (2007) Working time around the world trends in working hours, laws and policies in a global comparative perspective. Routledge, Abingdon

    Google Scholar 

  • Meader N, King K, Moe-Byrne T et al (2016) A systematic review on the clustering and co-occurrence of multiple risk behaviours. BMC Public Health 16:657. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3373-6

  • Monsivais P, Martin A, Suhrcke M et al (2015) Job-loss and weight gain in British adults: evidence from two longitudinal studies. Soc Sci Med (1982) 143:223–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.08.052

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Noble N, Paul C, Turon H et al (2015) Which modifiable health risk behaviours are related? A systematic review of the clustering of smoking, nutrition, alcohol and physical activity (‘SNAP’) health risk factors. Prev Med 81:16–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2015.07.003

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nyberg ST, Heikkila K, Fransson EI et al (2012) Job strain in relation to body mass index: pooled analysis of 160 000 adults from 13 cohort studies. J Intern Med 272(1):65–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2796.2011.02482.x

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2007) OECD workers in the global economy: increasingly vulnerable? In: OECD employment outlook OECD. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). OECD Publishing, Château de la Muette in Paris, France, pp 105–155. https://doi.org/10.1787/empl_outlook-2007-en

  • Oshio T, Tsutsumi A, Inoue A (2016) The association between job stress and leisure-time physical inactivity adjusted for individual attributes: evidence from a Japanese occupational cohort survey. Scand J Work Environ Health 42(3):228–236. https://doi.org/10.5271/sjweh.3555

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ota A, Masue T, Yasuda N et al (2010) Psychosocial job characteristics and smoking cessation: a prospective cohort study using the demand-control-support and effort-reward imbalance job stress models. Nicotine Tob Res 12(3):287–293. https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntp212

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Peter R, Siegrist J, Stork J et al (1991) Cigarette-smoking and psychosocial work stress in middle managers. Soz Praventiv Med 36(6):315–321. https://doi.org/10.1007/Bf01368738

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Poortinga W (2007) The prevalence and clustering of four major lifestyle risk factors in an English adult population. Prev Med 44(2):124–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2006.10.006

  • Siegrist J (1996) Adverse health effects of high-effort/low-reward conditions. J Occup Health Psychol 1(1):27–41

    Google Scholar 

  • Soderberg M, Rosengren A, Hillstrom J et al (2012) A cross-sectional study of the relationship between job demand-control, effort-reward imbalance and cardiovascular heart disease risk factors. BMC Public Health 12:Artn 1102. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-1102

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Solovieva S, Lallukka T, Virtanen M et al (2013) Psychosocial factors at work, long work hours, and obesity: a systematic review. Scand J Work Environ Health 39(3):241–258. https://doi.org/10.5271/sjweh.3364

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Spurgeon A, Harrington JM, Cooper CL (1997) Health and safety problems associated with long working hours: A review of the current position. Occup Environ Med 54(6):367–375. https://doi.org/10.1136/oem.54.6.367

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Virtanen M, Kivimaki M, Joensuu M et al (2005) Temporary employment and health: a review. Int J Epidemiol 34(3):610–622. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyi024

  • Virtanen M, Heikkila K, Jokela M et al (2012) Long working hours and coronary heart disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Am J Epidemiol 176(7):586–596. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kws139

  • Virtanen M, Jokela M, Nyberg S et al (2015) Long working hours and alcohol use: systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies and unpublished individual participant data. Br Med J 350:g7772. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7772

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Insurance Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Katriina Heikkilä

Authors
  1. Katriina Heikkilä
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katriina Heikkilä .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Stress Research Institute, University of Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden

    Töres Theorell

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Psychology and Counselling, School of Psychology and Public Health, LaTrobe University, Melbourne, Australia

    Bradley J. Wright

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Heikkilä, K. (2020). Work Stress and Adverse Health Behaviors. In: Theorell, T. (eds) Handbook of Socioeconomic Determinants of Occupational Health. Handbook Series in Occupational Health Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31438-5_29

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation