Chronic strain, daily work stress and pain among workers with rheumatoid arthritis: Does job stress make a bad day worse?

Abstract

The structure of the job and the daily experience of work are challenges for workers with rheumatoid arthritis. Yet little is known about how these two factors interact to put workers with chronic pain at risk for worse pain on a given day. This exploratory 20 workday diary study of 27 workers with rheumatoid arthritis used hierarchical linear modeling to examine how the structure of the job and neuroticism moderate the relationship between daily undesirable work events (daily stressors), and pain reports within a day. On days with more undesirable work events compared to days with fewer events, individuals with jobs associated with job "strain" (high demand/low control) reported greater midday pain, irrespective of neuroticism and negative mood, than workers with other combinations of demand and control. These findings demonstrate the utility of analyzing fluctuating within-person relationships among pain, mood, and daily work stressors within the context of the structure of the job, and helps to explain why daily work stressors result in worse health outcomes for some but not all workers with RA.

Effects of pain intensity on goal schemas and goal pursuit: A daily diary study.

“…Each of these can be construed as a dimension of forethought (Bandura, 1986) or what control theorists term feed-forward activation ---widely considered a key functional component of human self-regulation (Ford, 1987; Karoly, 1999, 2010). Moreover, goal-centered anticipatory cognitions, preparatory mindsets, autobiographical planning(what we are here calling goal schemas) can be especially potent in light of recent research demonstrating: (a) that future-oriented simulation encompassing various themes (such as work and play) can impact daily life performance (D’Argembeau, Renaud & Van Der Linden, 2011), (b) that the within-person dynamics of instrumental activity and task engagement at work are influenced by self-relevant thoughts and positive emotions (Binnewies, Sonnentag & Mojza, 2009; Fay & Sonnentag, 2012), (c) that goal schemas, like other modes of schematic cognition, can have durable effects (Fiske & Taylor, 2008), and (d) that pain’s effects on goal pursuit can be persistent and modulated by various aspects of goal cognition (Affleck, Tennen, Urrows, Higgins, Abeles, Hall et al, 1998; Fifield, McQuillan, Armeli, Tennen, Reisine, & Affleck, 2004; Karoly & Ruehlman, 1996; Pomaki, Karoly & Maes, 2009). …”

Arthritis symptoms, the work environment, and the future: measuring perceived job strain among employed persons with arthritis

“…Illnessrelated variables have also been examined for their contribution to work disability, including pain, disease duration, functional limitations, joint counts, and erythrocyte sedimentation rates (11,12,14,15,(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23). Largely absent from arthritis research, however, are individuals' perceptions of job strain (24,25).…”

Stress, health and illness: Four challenges for the future

“…This has been particularly the case in terms of studies exploring the relationship between stress and health behaviours (cf., O'Connor, Jones, Conner, McMillan, & Ferguson, 2008;O'Connor, Hendrickx, et al, 2009). Such approaches have ignored the burgeoning body of evidence showing that fluctuations in within-person stressful daily hassles are important in understanding stress-outcome processes and that major stressors can have a cascading effect on daily undesirable events (e.g., Affleck, Tennen, Urrows, & Higgins, 1994;Dancey, Taghavi, & Fox, 1998;Fifield et al, 2004;Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, & Lazarus, 1981;Newman, O'Connor, & Conner, 2007;Verkuil et al, 2012;Zautra et al, 1991). An early example comes from work by Kanner et al (1981).…”