Lewis A. Leitner

Diet, cigarette smoking, stressful life events, and subjective feelings of stress

A study of 133 workers in an educational institution showed that poor nutritional habits and cigarette smoking were associated with greater subjective stress.

Stress scores of workers by sex and age.

Claims are often made about the stressiul nature of particular occupations, but there are few comparative data on the stress of various occupations. W e have administered a battery of eight stress tests devised by Girdano and Everly (1979) to 557 workers in seven occupations. Tests were life events, frustration level, work overload, boredom/loneliness, poor nutrition, lack of self-confidence, Type A behavior, and anxious reactivity. The 291 men and 266 women of M,,, 38.6 yr. (SD = 10.9 yr.) were police officers, welfare workers, casino floorpersons, employees for the gas company, hospital employees, workers for the county, and college students. In this paper we present for these 557 workers the stress profiles by sex, age, and occ~pa t ion .~ Note p A 0.05 in each case. Sex differences appeared on two of the scales. Women obtained higher scores than men on the recent stressful life events scale ( t = 3.74) and higher scores on anxious reactivity ( t = 3.13). Age differences were found on four scales. In general, scores on the stressful life events scale decreased with age (F3,s.s = 16.51) as did scores on the scales of anxious reactivity (1;3.ss3 = 5.02) and Type A behavior ( F 3 , , 3 1 = 2.87). For the scale of poor nutrition, scores peaked for those in their 30s and 40s (F3 ,G30 = 3.40). Over-all, no one occupational group scored consistently higher or consistently lower on the bartery of tests. Furthermore, all of the mean scores were in the normal range of scores.

STRESS IN NURSES AND OTHER WORKING FEMALES

opinion. In the course of various training workshops on management of stress, an experimental stress profile (Girdano & Everly, 1979) was administered anonymously to 266 females (M.,. 36.6, SD = 11.9) who worked for a public utility company, hospitals, welfare agencies, casinos, county administrative offices, and college classes. This profile included self-re~ort measures of recent stressful life events (from Holrnes and Rahes Scale), frustration level, time pressure, boredom, bad nutritional habits, self-perception,

Stress management training for hospital supervisory personnel.

The overall goal of Stress Management Training is the re-orientation of peoples typical stress reaction habits into new, more rational and assertive patterns of problem-solving. Participants gain new insights into what stress is and how it affects them. They learn skills which reduce stress to nondamaging levels. They learn to use their minds to productively solve problems and to manage their personal and professional lives to a better end.