Occupational Stress and Coronary Heart Disease: A Review and Theoretical Integration

A paradigm for stress research is used to integrate existing evidence on the 'relationship of occupational stress to heart disease, and to suggest directions for future research. Although several objective and/or subjective indicators of occupational stress (i.e., low job satisfaction, job pressures such as work overload, status inconsistency, and/or job mobility) have been consistently related to heart disease, research is needed that delineates (1) individual and situational variables specifying these relationships and (2) the nature and consequences of adaptive responses to stress. Populations studied should increasingly include previously neglected groups (e.g., women and blacks) and consider relationships between stress and traditional biomedical variables.