The Trials and Tribulations of Teaching : A Psychobiological Perspective on Chronic Work Strss in School Teachers

Stress at work and its potential negative impact on the health status of employees are major problems for modern societies. The present thesis tried to integrate different approaches and research tools from work psychology, health psychology, psychosomatic medicine and psychoneuroendocrinology to study how chronic work stress affects health outcomes in a sample of healthy working school teachers. The teaching profession was selected because it is believed to be a potentially highly stressful occupation due to enhanced psychosocial stress at the workplace. One important stress responsive system is the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, a hierarchical hormonal system, which mediates the endocrine stress response. To shed some light on possible underlying mechanisms, basal HPA axis regulation, HPA axis feedback regulation and HPA axis reactivity after acute psychosocial stress were assessed. Furthermore results regarding a cumulative marker for physiological wear-and-tear, called allostatic load are presented. Such a psychobiological perspective may significantly enlarge our understanding of the relationship between stress at work and negative health outcomes, with important implications for the prevention and treatment of work-related ill health.