Abstract

Correctional employees are recognized to underreport stress and stress symptoms and are known to have a culture that discourages appearing "weak" and seeking psychiatric help. This study assesses underreporting of stress and emotions. Additionally, it evaluates the relationships between stress and emotions on health behaviors. Correctional employees (n=317) completed physical assessments to measure body mass index (BMI), and surveys to assess perceived stress, emotions, and health behavior (diet, exercise, and sleep quality). Stress and emotion survey items were evaluated for under-reporting via skewness, kurtosis, and visual assessment of histograms. Structural equation modeling evaluated relationships between stress/emotion and health behaviors. Responses to stress and negatively worded emotions were non-normally distributed whereas responses to positively-worded emotions were normally distributed. Emotion predicted diet, exercise, and sleep quality whereas stress predicted only sleep quality. As stress was a poor predictor of health behaviors and responses to stress and negatively worded emotions were non-normally distributed it may suggests correctional employees are under-reporting stress and negative emotions.

Highlights

  • Almost 69% of U.S adults are considered overweight or obese [1]

  • Descriptive analyses indicated that a majority of corrections employees reported no/few stress signals, with the percent reporting no stress signals ranging from 81.4 - 91.2% depending on the signal

  • Efforts to educate law enforcement employees on the risks of stress and withheld emotions and on effective ways to cope may be helpful in alleviating emotional turmoil

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Summary

Introduction

Obesity predicts increased risks of morbidity and mortality [2,3,4,5] and elevated medical costs [6]. Health behaviors have been identified as key determinants of bodyweight (e.g. diet and exercise) [5,7,8,9]. Stress and poor psychological health such as negative emotions, depression, and anxiety may be risk factors for obesity by promoting poor health behaviors. Emotional characteristics have been related to both body weight and health behaviors. Elevated stress is related to poor sleep quality and duration [13]. Poor sleep quality has been related to psychosocial health including negative mood state, depression [14], anger, hostility, and aggression [15,16,17]

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