Given evidence suggesting a detrimental effect of occupational stress on sleep, it is important to identify protective factors that may ameliorate this effect. We followed 87 paramedics upon waking and after work over 1 week using a daily diary methodology. Multilevel modeling was used to examine whether the detrimental effects of daily occupational stress on sleep quality were buffered by perceived social support availability. Paramedics who reported more support availability tended to report better quality sleep over the week. Additionally, perceived support availability buffered postworkday sleep from average occupational stress and days of especially high occupational stress. Perceived support availability also buffered off-workday sleep from the cumulative amount of occupational stress experienced over the previous workweek. Those with low levels of support displayed poor sleep quality in the face of high occupational stress; those high in support did not show significant effects of occupational stress on sleep. (PsycINFO Database Record

Research indicates that perceived support availability is beneficial, with support available from the spouse particularly important for well-being. However, actual support mobilization has shown mixed associations with recipient well-being. The primary goal of the present study was to go beyond examining the effects of global perceptions of support on recipient outcomes. Instead, we examined the effects of several specific types of support that have been found to be important in the clinical literature. In this study, we followed both members of couples in which one partner was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Patients provided reports on pain for both mornings and evenings across 1 week. Both partners also reported esteem, solicitous, and negative support mobilization received by the patient. We found that patient pain tended to increase across the day following increases in patient reports of negative support receipt and partner reports of solicitous support provision. We also found that patient pain tended to decrease across the day when partners reported increased levels of esteem support provision. Reverse causation analyses indicated higher levels of patient pain may lead partners to increase solicitous support mobilization to the patient. Findings underscore the importance of examining both partners’ reports of support within a dyadic coping framework. They further suggest that not all forms of support are equally beneficial, calling for a finer grained assessment of specific support transactions.

No abstract

Individuals tend to cope in ways that maintain communion when they perceive communion to be threatened; they tend to cope in ways that maintain agency when they perceive agency to be threatened.

No abstract