The influence of personality, measured by the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP), on symptoms among subjects in suspected sick buildings

Abstract

Personality and personal vulnerability should be considered in both indoor environmental epidemiology and practical handling of building with suspected indoor problem, especially when the technical investigations fail to identify any obvious technical malfunction. Moreover, personality aspects should be considered among subjects with possible vulnerable personality exposed to environmental stress, and personality diagnosis can be a complementary tool useful when assessing 'sick building patients' in the medical services. We found no evidence of severe personality pathology in among those working in workplaces with environmental problems so called 'sick buildings'.

Sick Building Syndrome and Its Associating Factors at a Hospital in Kashan, Iran

“…In the present study, the relationship between the prevalence of SBS and gender was not statistically significant (P>0.05), and this finding was in line with some other similar studies (4,(14)(15)(16)). In the current research, the most common general symptoms of SBS were headache, heaviness in the head, difficulty in concentration and dry skin among the subjects in the studied wards.…”

“…For example, in one conducted study, the most prevalent symptoms of SBS among nurses were lack of concentration, headache, dry skin, redness, and eye irritation (14). While, another study, which was investigating SBS in the hospitals of Portugal, the prevalent factors were revealed to be environmental factors including unpleasant odor, smoking, and noise (15). Hence, different buildings and various SBS causes can create diversity in SBS frequency in different studies.…”

An update on sick building syndrome

“…Positive associations between SBS and anxiety and depression, measured by the Hospital Anxiety and depression Scale (HAD), have been reported [33]. Moreover, there is an association between sense of coherence (SOC) and SBS [38] and between SBS and personality traits measured by the Karolinska scale of personality [39]. Finally, stress load measured by a nonverbal projective drawing test was related to SBS [40 ].…”

Sick building syndrome (SBS) among office workers in a Malaysian university — Associations with atopy, fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) and the office environment

“…A number of risk factors for SBS have been identified (Andersson, 1998;Apter et al, 1994;Norbäck, 2009), including personal factors, psychosocial work environment and indoor environment factors. Female gender (Brasche et al, 2001;Stenberg and Wall, 1995), allergy (Björnsson et al, 1998;Sahlberg et al, 2012), personality traits (Runeson et al, 2004) and lower sense of coherence (Runeson et al, 2003) were reported to be associated with SBS. Moreover, unbalanced psychosocial work environment (Marmot et al, 2006;Runeson et al, 2006) and occupational stress (Azuma et al, 2014;Bakke et al, 2007) have been shown to be related to SBS symptoms.…”