Measuring Individual Stress Levels In A Workplace Environment Using The Circadian Heart Rate

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Despite mental disorders being the leading cause of sickness, absenteeism and work incapacity in most developed countries, mental health has not been given due attention by most employer organisations. Recent evidence suggests that many mental health problems are preventable with adverse psychosocial work environments known to be a risk factor for mental disorders. Most of these adverse stressors are experienced initially through the development of “work stress” with some later deteriorating into frank mental disorder. There is a key issues in this context. Whilst the use of pen and paper technology based questionnaires is commonplace to screen for stress there are concerns over their false positive rate and predictive ability. Measures of Heart rate variability (HRV), the beat-to-beat temporal changes in the heart rate (HR), may provide an alternative measure for stress assessment. These beat-to-beat changes are commonly used as a quantitative marker depicting the activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), and thus related to mental stress. It has been suggested that changes in heart rate over 24 hours, or circadian heart rate (CHR) changes, may present adjunct information for stress assessment as circadian dysregulation is present in varying degrees in all psychiatric illnesses. As such, it has been proposed that HR profiling algorithms might provide an objective and predictive measure of stress becoming a clinical illness. This study aims to assess whether measures of CHR can provide objective indications of stress and distress in the workplace. CHR and self-report measures will be collected at baseline and 8 week follow-up.

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