Finding the most stressful occupations

Jobs in which you have to hide your true feelings and emotions are the most stressful according to a large study comparing stress levels of 24 occupations. Ambulance service staff, teachers, social services, customer services (i.e. Call centre staff), prison officers, clerical and administrative and the police came out as the occupations highest on stress. What most of these occupations have in common is a lot of face to face contact with a high degree of 'emotional labour'.

These are the findings of a study by Clare Millet of Robertson Cooper Limited, Manchester, and Sheena Johnson from The University of Liverpool with colleagues from the University of Manchester and University of Lancaster. The research will be reported today, Friday 14 January 2005, at the British Psychological Society's Division of Occupational Psychology Annual Conference. The conference, sponsored by Pearn Kandola, is being held at the Chesford Grange Hotel, just outside the town of Warwick.

The findings are based on comparisons of findings of over 10,000 people who completed a questionnaire which measures sources of workplace stress and job pressures, organisational commitment and employee health. While the findings suggest that emotional factors are important they are clearly not the only factor. Some jobs, such as nursing which have high emotional content were not in the top seven. The researchers suggest that it is a combination of emotion together with other factors, such as work overload, poor work life balance.

Other papers at the conference highlight different aspects of stress

• Ethnic discrimination causes stress for many teachers, according to research presented by Grace Miller from Loughborough University Business School. She reports the findings of a study of 208 minority ethnic teachers contacted through the National Union of Teachers. Nearly half of the sample felt that institutional racism existed in their school. The results suggested that ethnic discrimination influenced psychological well-being of staff.
• 'Time transpective' or the way that people deal with the concept of time is related to workplace stress according to Brian Faragher from the University of Manchester. He reports the findings of a survey of 163 people. High levels of stress were experienced by people who had a pessimistic attitude to the past or a fatalistic attitude to the future.

Ref: PR712