A couple of studies conducted by researchers from the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington state that workplace and financial stress have a negative impact on health behaviors and lead to poor health choices.
A study conducted by researchers from the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington found that workplace and financial stress can lead to people making poor health choices like smoking and drinking more. Researchers of the study found that men reported smoking more if work related stress affected their home life while women reported smoking more if home related stress affected their professional work.
Another study conducted by the same group of researchers found that financial stress also had the same effect on both men and women. For the second study, authors surveyed 4,000 men and women and looked into their health behaviors before and after the recession of 2008. They found that apart from the people who reported experiencing financial stress during the recession, health behaviors like exercise and attention to nutrition improved among the others.
The study is the first of its kind, say researchers as it is the first to be conducted on 423 adults who smoked daily contrary to previous studies which looked at whether a person smoked or not and included non smokers as participants as well.
The study also found that employees of offices that have more lenient workplace smoking restrictions tend to smoke more. Authors of the study suggest workplace wellness programs should look into such work-family conflicts and encourage employees to indulge in healthy behaviors, even during such situations.
"There's growing evidence that work-family conflict is related to a range of negative health behaviors, and it's something for workplace wellness programs to take into consideration when they're trying to get employees to engage in healthier behaviors, whether it's physical activity, nutrition or quitting smoking," said Jon Macy, lead author of both studies and assistant professor in the Department of Applied Health Science at the School of Public Health-Bloomington in a press release.
The first study that dealt with workplace stress was published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research while the second study that dealt with financial stress was published in the journal Social Science & Medicine.
