Monday, November 19, 2007

Is stress incurable for IT pros?

I found this in an article on the PubMed web site: "In a study of the bodily, mental, and psychophysiological reactions of employees involved in the design of advanced telecommunications systems and of office employees using regular video display technology, several stress-related psychosomatic disorders have been identified." Those disorders include:

  • Sleep disturbances
  • Psychophysiological stress (I looked this up and got this definition — the branch of psychology that is concerned with the physiological bases of psychological processes. Now if I only knew what that means.)
  • Somatic complaints (headaches, chest pains, nausea, lower back pain, etc.)

So, okay, the fact that IT design people are more prone to stress is not such a big surprise. The depressing part is that the same group performed a controlled experiment with 116 advanced telecommunication systems design employees to see how well stress reduction techniques worked on them. Their conclusion?

"The type of stress-reduction programs chosen and intensity of participation did not significantly impact results."

Wow. That's certainly an uplifting bit of data. I wonder how closely that mirrors the IT society as a whole?

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