TY  - JOUR
A1  - Muschalla, Beate
A1  - Heldmann, Madleen
A1  - Fay, Doris
T1  - The significance of job-anxiety in a working population
JF  - Occupational medicine
N2  - Background Job-anxiety, as distinguished from trait-anxiety, is associated with long-term sickness absence. The prevalence of job-anxiety within a working population is not known. Identifying individuals who would benefit from intervention might be useful.
 Aims To investigate job-anxiety in employees not undergoing treatment for mental health illness, firstly by assessing the level of job-anxiety and work-related avoidance tendencies in a working sample, and secondly by testing whether job-anxiety is distinguishable from trait-anxiety.
 Methods Cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample obtained through personal contact distribution. Employees from different professional settings completed an anonymous questionnaire and provided information on their employment status. The State-Trait-Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T) was used to measure trait-anxiety and the Job-Anxiety-Scale (JAS) was used to assess job (state) anxiety.
 Results There was a 69% response rate (240 responses); 188 responses were available for analysis of whom 62% were women. There were no employees with high trait-anxiety. Ten employees (5%) reported increased job-anxiety and of these nine employees reported high 'tendencies of avoidance and workplace absence'. Avoidance was most often accompanied by the comorbid job-anxieties 'job-related social anxiety', 'fear of changes at work' and 'fears of existence', 'anticipatory' and 'conditioned' job-anxiety and 'panic symptoms'.
 Conclusions In this sample, self-reported job-anxiety appeared as a specific type of anxiety as opposed to trait-anxiety. In the workplace job-anxiety can present as job-avoidance and sickness absence and should be distinguished from trait-anxiety. In practice, employers and occupational health practitioners should be aware of those employees prone to sickness absence.
KW  - Job-anxiety
KW  - occupational health
KW  - sickness absence
KW  - trait-anxiety
KW  - workplace
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqt072
SN  - 0962-7480
VL  - 63
IS  - 6
SP  - 415
EP  - 421
PB  - Oxford Univ. Press
CY  - Oxford
ER  -