Biology, in An Introduction to Vocational Psychology

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Stress, Rest, and Disease
by Andrew D. Carson, Ph.D.

Amount of rest and sleep affects vocational performance, and there may also be some occupations that differentially attract those who tend to have unusual sleep patterns or not enough sleep. Some research suggests that there are also striking national differences in amount of sleep deprivation experienced by workers, with the United States being the worst offender. Reportedly, the problem of sleep deprivation is expecially problematic in new economy jobs, such as workers employed by startup dotcoms. However, the problem of too much work and insufficient sleep is hardly a new one. There are reports that in 19th century England workers in early factories worked horrendously long days. Soldiers in the field likewise have long worked very long hours, at least during active campaigns. Likewise, during harvest time farmers would work nearly round the clock. However, what separates the preindustrial from the industrial and postindustrial vocationally related sleep deprivation is that the more recent versions are both severe and chronic. It is possible that recent increases in diabetes in the United States and to a lesser degree in other industrialized nations is associated with this chronic sleep deprivation. Another potential consequence of sleep deprivation is death through overwork, called "Karoshi" in Japan, but also present in the West, perhaps especially in Victorian England, where workers endured punishing hours over years of toil, to a degree that makes the modern dotcom startup worker look like they are enjoying travel on a cruise ship. It is not for nothing that the modern labor union was born in England, nor that the writings that formed much of the basis for subsequent communist revolutions were written by Marx and Engels in England. You can get a sense of the brutality of working conditions from reading Dickens, but if you really want to sample Karoshi Western style, read Engels.

Occupaptional health psychology is a relatively recent psychological specialty that taps such issues as work-related stress and its relation to disease and immunology. The reader is referred to standard references in that field for more background. However, the both the educator and counselor should understand at least the basics of the relation between work demands, stress, and appropriate preventive and treatment methods. The area also offers much of interest to the vocational researcher. For example, some interesting research has investigated the degree to which degree of (personality) fit between a person and environment is associated with physiological indicators of stress (e.g., elevated blood pressure); early findings suggest this is the case.

Finally, the relationship between disease and vocational choice and adjustment also merits investigation. Occupational health psychology and vocational rehabilitation are both concerned with this issue, although a number of vocational psychologists and career counselors have also developed expertise in this area. There has, for example, been a reasonable amount of research in recent years done on HIV/AIDS status in relation to vocational behavior and experience.