The relationship between role and life event stress, mental and physical health, and hardiness dimensions

Stress at work and its relationship to the physical and mental health of workers is a difficult problem to define as there are many different types of stress and innumerable stress consequences. The problem is further compounded by the vast array of variables that mediate the relationship between various types of stresses and their consequences. This study was focused on two specific types of stress, role based stress and life event stress, and two general categories of stress consequences, mental and physical health. Also examined in the study were the effects of three other variables: anxiety, extroversion, and flexibility. Extroversion and flexibility were of particular interest because they were identified as hardiness factors in previous studies. A hardiness factor is a variable that prevents individuals from experiencing negative stress consequences, even when highly stressed. The results indicate that anxiety was the most important independent variable studied. In a series of discriminant analyses assessing all possible stress-health relationships in the study, anxiety was the discriminant variable in every first order discriminant function. Extroversion and flexibility were not found to be hardiness factors. In fact, in two of the analyses they appear to contribute to the stress-health problem. The results of this study demonstrate the need to consider the influence of anxiety when examining the stress-health relationship, and the need to continue the search for hardiness factors that can reduce the negative consequences of stress in high stress populations.