examined the prevalence of coronary heart disease in women and compared this
prevalence between working and non-working women. In addition, they measured
aspects of work such as job demand, social support and perceived control over work. The
results showed that the working women were not more likely to have coronary heart
disease than the non-working women, suggesting that job demand is not simply a pre-
dictor of coronary heart disease. However, within the working women, those women
who reported low perceived control over their work were more likely to have coronary
heart disease than those who reported high perceived control, suggesting that within
that group of people with high job demand, low control was a predictor of illness,
supporting the predicted association between social support and health. In addition,
within the group of working women, those who showed low work support were also
more likely to have coronary heart disease, supporting the research on social support
and its relationship to illness. The study also looked at how many children both the
working and the non-working women had and related this to coronary heart disease.
The results showed that a higher number of children increased the risk of coronary
heart disease in the working women, but not in the non-working women. The authors
argued that the number of children may be a contributor to job demand, but that this
increased coronary heart disease in working women but not in the non-working women.
The results for this study are shown in Figure 11.5.
TO CONCLUDE
Cross-sectional research suggests an association between stress and illness and some
experimental studies indicate that stress can cause illness. Theories of the stress–
illness link suggest that stress may cause illness through chronic and acute processes
Fig. 11-5 Incidence of CHD by number of children: the role of work stress on illness in
women (after Haynes et al. 1980)STRESS AND ILLNESS 281