Occupational Stress and Health Promotion: A Psychosocial Approach

The increasing potential hazards to health resulting from unsafe occupational environment are creating an alarming situation and promotion of occupational health and well being has become an issue of great concern. In recent years, there has been a growing multinational awareness of, and interest in matters of individual physical/psychosocial occupational environment. With the advancements in technological process, physical and chemical hazards in the working environment have been controlled to some extent resulting in reduced occupational diseases and accidents but on the other side, there is an out-spurt of psycho-social stress which has not so far been seriously taken care of. The present paper attempts to draw the attention of occupational health professionals in the field of psychosocial stress and its role in overall organizational health and well being. Several health promoting strategies (individual/organizational) have also been suggested with special reference to the sense of coherence model, consideration of psychological requirements of personnel, bio-feedback and relaxation technique.