Mental Stress Linked to Sleep Issues in Older Employees

Highlights:

• Sleep is crucial for recovery and sleep disturbances can impact health, work and overall functional ability of an individual.
• Amount of work and nonwork stress that an employee had is closely associated with sleep problems.
• Flexible working hours for older employees could be an important target for development.

Sleep issues in older workers are associated with mental stress factors in the workplace and in personal life. Sleep and sleep quality are crucial for recovery. Disturbances in sleeping and recovery may impact health, work and overall functional ability (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Mental stress factors are associated with sleep problems among older employees

Go to source). An understudied area, variables related to sleep among older workers, are now better understood because of the recent study from the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Turku. 2,771 Finnish municipal workers who were close to retiring were part of the study.

The study investigated the relationships between work-life balance, stressful life circumstances, mental and physical working conditions, and sleep issues in older employees.

Stress at Work and Home is Linked to Sleep Issues

In a different demographic research, over 70% of Finnish women and more than 50% of Finnish men aged 60 to 69 reported experiencing sleep problems in the previous month.

“In our study, we identified four different components that are associated with mental stress. These are physical workload and shift work, psychosocial workload, social and environmental nonwork adversity and life event and health-related nonwork adversity. The more an employee had work and nonwork stressors, the more problems they also had with sleep,” said Professor of Psychology Marianna Virtanen of the University of Eastern Finland.

Loneliness and minimal social engagement with neighbours are examples of social and environmental non-work difficulties. The adversity that is not work-related but is due to stressful life events or medical caregiving is referred to as life event- and health-related nonwork adversity.

Flexibility is a Crucial Area for Improvement

Different stressors were connected to sleep issues in different ways. While work-related stress was linked to present sleep issues, loneliness and stress associated with the living environment predicted escalating sleep issues throughout the follow-up. The quality of sleep was related with psychosocial working circumstances.

“In this study, psychosocial working conditions were described by the contents and arrangements of work, such as opportunities for influencing and working hours, as well as by competence development and fair management. Especially when there are stress factors in private life, such as severe illness or death in the family, or being an informal caregiver for someone, flexible working hours are an important target for development,” said Virtanen.

References:

1. Mental stress factors are associated with sleep problems among older employees - (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/961423)

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Source-Eurekalert