APSB11727U Elective course - Psychosocial Job Stress and Chronic Disease

Can psychosocial conditions at work cause disease? What are the mechanisms? How do we assess and quantify psychosocial conditions and their effects? How can we intervene against job stress? These and other questions are the topics for the course. The course is interdisciplinary, and will introduce commonly used models of work-related stress, as well as broadly applicable methods for measuring the physiological effects of stress on the body. These methods are useful in understanding the effects of job stress and psychosocial stressors on health and wellbeing, with applications for cardiovascular disease (CVD), depression, metabolic illness, and other chronic diseases. The course includes both structured lectures that introduce and review various concepts and methods, and group work were where students are encouraged to engage with fellow students and researchers. These lectures and group work cover topics such as models of psychosocial job stress, mechanisms between psychosocial job stress and health, critical discussion of the association between job stress and chronic diseases, and job stress interventions.