How does occupational stress affect individuals employed in textiles? An exploratory study from Pakistan

Occupational stress among the employees has become a major concern for the organizations without exemption for the textile and clothing industry, a major manufacturing industry of the developing countries. In Pakistan, it contributes 8.5% to the GDP and is a source of employment for 30% of the workforce. This research aims at exploring the effects of job stress amongst the individuals employed in textiles. For the purpose, data was collected from 1212 textile industry employees. Deployment of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on the information collected resulted four stress impact factors, namely psychological, behavioural, performance and effectiveness, and physical. The factors described an overall accumulative variance of 60.87%, with psychological as the most significant, explaining 40% of the total. Results of this work disclose that how Occupational Stress affect the employees of textile and clothing industry. There is a need to understand the complexity of stress phenomenon so that the stress management intervention strategies could be designed and implemented accordingly. Findings of this research may be helpful in unfolding the complexity of stress phenomenon and these can be used as a guideline for the design and promotion of more acceptable and viable approaches or strategies for real-time benefits realization at individual and organizational level in terms of higher job satisfaction, motivation and productivity.

Feasibility of a web-based stress management intervention for university students in Indonesia

Background University students are susceptible to excessive stress. A web-based stress management intervention holds promise to improve stress but is still at a novel stage in Indonesia. This present paper reports the feasibility of the intervention we developed ( ‘Rileks’ ) among university students in Indonesia in terms of acceptability and usability, and to propose recommendations for future improvements. Methods A single-group pre-test and post-test design was used. Participants with DASS-42 Stress scale score ≥ 15 were given access to the intervention (N= 68). The main outcome measures were the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire-8 (CSQ-8), the System Usability Scale (SUS), and intervention uptake. Participants’ experience in each session was evaluated using closed and open-ended questions for future improvements. Descriptive statistics were used to examine primary outcome and qualitative session evaluations. Participants’ responses to each topic of the open questions were summarized. Results The intervention was evaluated as being satisfactory (CSQ-8 average score 21.89 (SD 8.72), range 8-32). However, the intervention’s usability was still below expectation (SUS average score 62.8 (SD 14.74), range 0-100). The core modules were completed by 10 participants (14.7%) and the study drop out rate was 63.23% at post-assessment. The module content was rated generally positively with some notes for improvement covering content and technical aspects. Conclusions The study indicates that Rileks is potentially feasible for Indonesian university students. In order to be optimally applied in such context and before scaling up web-based intervention in general in Indonesia a further development and refinement are needed.

Stress management intervention to enhance adolescent resilience: a randomized controlled trial

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an 8-week stress management intervention to enhance resilience and coping techniques and decrease stress in adolescent students. Teenagers, 11 to 17 years old, recruited from two tertiary Adolescent Medicine Centers of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, were randomly assigned into two groups: the stress management group (n=24) and the control group (n=25). Resilience, stress, anxiety, everyday use of social media, school performance and cognitive skills were measured in adolescents of both groups, pre- and post-intervention. Post-intervention, the stress management group had significantly higher resilience scores and school performance self-evaluation scores, lower scores of stress, anxiety and everyday use of social media and better cognitive skills than the control group. Regarding cognitive skills, the stress management group significantly improved the speed of information processing and memory. Adolescents following stress management experienced significantly reduced stress from interacting with teachers/parents, from peer pressure, from school/leisure conflict as well as compulsive behaviours. With respect to resilience, the intervention improved adolescents’ individual skills and resources, relationships with primary caregivers, and environmental factors that facilitated the sense of belonging. Future studies of large adolescent samples are required to evaluate the long-term benefits of stress management techniques on adolescents' health and resilience, as well as the need of continued support to preserve these benefits throughout transition to adulthood.

Randomized controlled evaluation of the psychophysiological effects of social support stress management in healthy women

Considering the high and increasing prevalence of stress, approaches to mitigate stress-related biological processes become a matter of public health. Since supportive social interactions contribute substantially to mental and physical health, we set out to develop a social support stress management intervention and examined its effects on psychophysiological stress responses as well as self-reported stress in healthy women. In a parallel-group randomized controlled trial, registered in the DSRK (DRKS00017427), 53 healthy women were randomly assigned to a social support stress management or a waitlist control condition. All participants underwent a standardized psychosocial stress test where physiological and emotional stress responses were assessed by repeated measurements of cortisol, heart rate, heart rate variability and state anxiety. Also, all participants completed self-report questionnaires of perceived stress and social support at pre-intervention, post-intervention and follow-up four weeks later. Participants in the social support stress management showed a significantly attenuated integrated state anxiety response in comparison to those in the control condition, but conditions did not differ in any of the assessed physiological stress responses. The intervention significantly reduced perceived stress in comparison to the control condition, but perceived stress levels returned to baseline at follow-up. Our results indicated that the intervention had no effect on physiological responses to acute psychosocial stress, even though anxiety responses to stress were attenuated. However, the social support stress management intervention had a significant, albeit transient impact on perceived stress.