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. 2015 Jul;1(1):10.16966/2380-5528.101.
doi: 10.16966/2380-5528.101. Epub 2015 Feb 27.

Psychological Health and Overweight and Obesity Among High Stressed Work Environments

Pouran D Faghri  1 , Christina Mignano  2 , Tania B Huedo-Medina  3 , Martin Cherniack  4
Affiliations

Psychological Health and Overweight and Obesity Among High Stressed Work Environments

Pouran D Faghri et al. Obes Open Access. 2015 Jul.

Abstract

Correctional employees are recognized to underreport stress and stress symptoms and are known to have a culture that discourages appearing "weak" and seeking psychiatric help. This study assesses underreporting of stress and emotions. Additionally, it evaluates the relationships between stress and emotions on health behaviors. Correctional employees (n=317) completed physical assessments to measure body mass index (BMI), and surveys to assess perceived stress, emotions, and health behavior (diet, exercise, and sleep quality). Stress and emotion survey items were evaluated for under-reporting via skewness, kurtosis, and visual assessment of histograms. Structural equation modeling evaluated relationships between stress/emotion and health behaviors. Responses to stress and negatively worded emotions were non-normally distributed whereas responses to positively-worded emotions were normally distributed. Emotion predicted diet, exercise, and sleep quality whereas stress predicted only sleep quality. As stress was a poor predictor of health behaviors and responses to stress and negatively worded emotions were non-normally distributed it may suggests correctional employees are under-reporting stress and negative emotions.

Keywords: Correctional employees; Emotion; Health behavior; Stress; Structural equation modeling.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of responses to stress survey items
Figure 2
Figure 2
Distribution of responses to positively and negatively worded emotions
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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