Nervous strain, anxiety and symptoms amongst 32‐year‐old men at work in Britain

Amongst a group of 1052 men followed up since birth and living throughout Britain, it was found that reports of nervous strain at work related to features of the job (those in more highly demanding jobs reporting more strain), to earlier indications of prior susceptibility to anxiety and to a more frequent report of stomach pain, headache and sleep problems. The report of these symptoms, however, related to the indicators of susceptibility to anxiety rather than to the apparently stressful factors of the job, and it is concluded that exposure to the job demands examined in this study did not affect the frequency of symptom reporting.