[Comment: Studies like this are a useless waste of research funds. From the outset, this study claims to want to determine whether psychiatric problems precede IEI or are the result of IEI. Yet, in the conclusion, they just assume that stress results in IEI. Everyone has job stress. If you don't, you're not alive. There is no evidence that the baseline measurements were taken when a person did not have IEI in its earliest stages. Let's face it, IEI will create job and relationship stress. And so will being ill and not knowing it yet. How about doing some real research on the cause and treatments for IEI and dump this psychiatric garbage in the trash where it belongs? No matter what the illness, there are psychiatric aspects as one loses their life as they knew, loses earnings, stresses finances and relationships, and faces other challenges. These are all reactionary situations, not causatory. Treating the psychiatric aspects does nothing to treat the physical condition.]
Factors associated with prospective development of environmental annoyance.
Eek F, Karlson B, Osterberg K, Ostergren PO.
J Psychosom Res. 2010 Jul;69(1):9-15. Epub 2010 Jan 21.
Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Idiopathic environmental intolerance (IEI) has in cross-sectional studies been associated with emotional problems and psychiatric disorders. However, in the absence of prospective studies it has not been possible to determine whether emotional problems precede the onset of IEI, or are a consequence of IEI. The purpose of this study was to address this issue in a prospective panel study design.
METHODS: The study sample (n=10 275) responded to a postal survey that included five questions regarding annoyance from environmental factors, at baseline and at follow-up five years later. Associations between a number of self-rating scales of stress, subjective health, and working conditions at baseline on one hand, and development of environmental annoyance from baseline to follow-up on the other, were examined.
RESULTS: Participants having developed environmental annoyance between baseline and follow-up had at baseline reported more subjective health complaints, higher levels of stress, strain, and lack of recovery, more dissatisfaction with their work situation, and lower personal social support, compared to participants not developing environmental annoyance.
CONCLUSION: Elevated subjective health complaints, high stress in daily life and a strained work situation, all possible signs of sustained arousal, increase the risk of developing annoyance to environmental factors. The results fit the hypothesis that reduced subjective health, over the course of time, may be attributed to environmental factors.
PMID: 20630258 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
