Stress, Obesity and Selected Health Problems among Professionals

In medical terms stress is described as, "a physical or psychological stimulus that can produce mental tension or physiological reactions that may lead to illness". But there is not always necessary to say that stress in harmful as Hans Selye says, "stress is not necessarily something bad - it all depends on how person take it. The stress of exhilarating, creative successful work is beneficial, while that of failure, humiliation or infection is detrimental." Stress can be therefore negative, positive or neutral.

Objectives: To assess the level of stress as measured by David Fontana's Professional Life Stress Scale and to assess the obesity and other selected health problems among professionals.

Method: In order to achieve the objectives of the study, a correlative non-experimental design with purposive, snowball sampling technique was used in this study. Samples of 300 professionals (Nursing-75, Banking-75, Teaching-75 and Pharmacy-75) were selected from different organizations, institutions and hospitals of Belgaum city. A self administered questionnaire was used for data collection.

Result: The findings revealed that majority (76.3%) of professionals had mild level of stress. The mean score was 23.86 ± 6.24. Result showed that majority (70.3%) of professionals had a normal BMI. The mean score of obesity was 23.18 ± 3.13. Findings also revealed that majority (63%) of professionals had mild degree of selected health problems with mean score was 74.73±20.15.

Findings of the study revealed that there is a positive correlation between level of stress and selected health problems (r= 0.5495, p<0.001). There is a very low positive correlation between level of obesity and selected health problems (r= 0.026) and there is a negative correlation between level of stress and obesity (r= -0.026). There was significant association between the level of stress and monthly income, type of family, occupation of family members, monthly family income, pattern of diet, years of experience at work and habits. Findings revealed that there was significant association between the level of obesity and age, sex, education, profession and years of experience at work and monthly income had a significant association with selected health problems.