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Job demands and adverse health effects at a pharmaceutical industry in Mexico.

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42-16805089Guadalupe Luna Flores
Susana Martínez Alcántara

The work processes and main work demands experienced by workers in a pharmaceutical manufacturing industry were evaluated, together with their association with physical and mental disorders. An observational and analytical study was conducted in 244 employees of a drug manufacturing company in Mexico City. The PROESSAT program (worker health assessment and tracking program) was used to collect data on working conditions and adverse health effects.The study population was divided almost equally by gender, with 50.4{20a60b73a1cda07ce2433237b967754d6e53d5d16fc2e14f7e109f91f7e5e586} males and 49.6{20a60b73a1cda07ce2433237b967754d6e53d5d16fc2e14f7e109f91f7e5e586} females. Average age was 34.5 years (S.D., 7.9 years). Study demands evaluated included: confusing or unclear supervisor orders, awkward postures, repetitive tasks, working in a single place without moving, rotating shift work, strict quality control, having to concentrate to avoid accidents, strict supervision, prolonged standing and exposure to noise. Adverse health effects examined included: tension headaches, pathological fatigue, sleep disorders, anxiety, migraine, depression, psychosomatic digestive disorders and non-specific cardiovascular disorders. The overall morbidity rate was 83 per 100 workers. Jobs in quality control featured the greatest number of job demands associated with adverse health effects, and men exposed to different demands had a stronger association with adverse health effects than similarly exposed women. Several interventions to reduce the adverse effects on workers and in the company are proposed.

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Interaction of work demands in the genesis of mental suffering.

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007Mariano Noriega
Cristina Laurell
Susana Martínez
Ignacio Méndez
Jorge Villegas

Current working conditions and new forms of work organization are affecting workers’ health in numerous way wich can only be explained by more complex theories and methodologies than those used traditionally. The authors analyze some important elements of the work process and the  interaction among work demands as determinants of mental and psychosomatic disorders and fatigue (MPDF) among workers in a Mexican industrial plant. The workers studied (n=830) were male, with a mean age of 32.  MPDF represent one-third of the disease burden among these workers.  An association was observed with the number of years worked, type of activity, and job area. Job-related demandas and work organization, including excessive work, strict supervision, dangerous work, unnatural positions, and intense and hard physical labor were also closely related to  these conditions. The most relevant problem is the combination of many different demands. Interaction among the combinations was found to be additive or synergistic. In the latter condition the risk of morbid effects increases beyond merely and additive effect.

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Control de trabajo, exigencias laborales y daños a la salud en trabajadores de un diario informativo en la Ciudad de México

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004Susana Martínez Alcántara
Silvia Tamez González
Luis Ortíz Hernández
Ignacio Méndez Ramírez

The results are presented here of a research study carried out at a newspaper establishment in Mexico City to discover the relationship between working conditions and damage to health. The study was transversal, an epidemiological questionnaire being applied to 218 workers. The main hazards and demands to which the workers were subjected in the course of their work were investigated, as was also the presence or not of elements deriving from control of the work which would make it qualitatively more enriching, and whether or not the workers received social support from co-workers and bosses. This set of variables was studied in relation to some health problems such as eye disorders (eye fatigue and neurovisual fatigue), disorders resulting from repetitive strain (in the upper limbs and hands), body pain syndrome, mental psychosomatics and dermatological disorders and fatigue. Among the principal results the two most important conditions related to various different disorders were identified as overcrowding and uncomfortable poitions, the statistical association being as much as p <0.001. The  analysis of synergetic and additive effects showed that the  interaction between the elements of work content were statistically associated. Such was the case of excess work in overcrowded conditions, which interact synergetically with fatigue and repetitive strain disorders in upper limbs and hands, with p <0.05.

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Teachers’ occupation-specific work-family conflict.

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005Mina Westman

Profound changes in the world of work in recent decades, such as rising numbers of women in career trajectories, have stimulated much research on work-family conflict (WFC) (Grzywacz & Marks, 2000). WFC is a form of interrole conflict comprising incompatible incompatible adj. 1) inconsistent. 2) unmatching. 3) unable to live together as husband and wife due to irreconcilable differences. In no-fault divorce states, if one of the spouses desires to end the marriage, that fact proves incompatibility, and a divorce  pressures from work and family roles (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Results of this research have repeatedly demonstrated the negative effects of WFC on employees’ behavior, emotions, and health (see Frone, 2003) and have underscored the importance of reducing the conflict.

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Participatory research on workers’ health.

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WorkersAsa Cristina Laurell
Mariano Noriega
Susana Martínez
Jorge Villegas

Autonomous Metropolitan University Xochimilco

The concern for workers’ health has increased in Latin America during the last decade both on the part of  research institutions and trade unions. A special emphasis has been given to active participation of workers not just in the transformation of working conditions to improve health but also in generation of knowledge. This paper presents an action oriented participatory research methodology based on a collective questionnaire that permits the recollection of data on characteristics of the labour process, risks and health damage. A comparison between the information on risks, health damage and the relationship risks-damage obtained with this methodology and those of an individual questionnaire applied at the same steel factory shows that the results produced are very similar. In view of these findings in is concluded that the participatory methodology has some important advantages over traditional methodologies since it provides qualitative information on the labour process, a precise picture of the main risks and how they are produced and semi-quantitative data on health damage, and at the same time, generates a process of consciousness and organization among workers that enables them to promote health oriented action.

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Puestos de trabajo y perfil patologico mental en trabajadores siderurgicos.

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003Asa Cristina Laurell
Susana Martínez Alcántara
Mariano Noriega
Olivia López
Jorge Villegas

Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana

Los puestos de trabajo típicos de una industría siderúrgica se pueden agrupar por el tipo de actividad y la forma en que se organiza el trabajo. Por estas características los trabajadores se exponen de manera diferencial a las condiciones nocivas del ambiente y a los requerimientos que les imponen sus condiciones de trabajo. En este artículo se presenta la patología mental asociada a las formas en que se insertan los trabajadores en el proceso siderúrgico de una empresa mexicana ubicada en Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, México.

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Proceso de Trabajo y Salud Mental. Área medular de la Psicología del Trabajo

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001Susana Martínez Alcántara
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana
Unidad Xochimilco

One of the main objectives of the psychology of work is to unravel the ways in which production processes generate or trigger disturbances of a mental character among the working population. Currently tools of a theoretical, methodological and technical nature can be provided for exploring these problems and in the last decade these have been reported more systematically in scientific literatura, with the consequence that recommendations can be made for solving them. Using this logic, an approach is made in this work to the way in which the psychological content of work and its relation to mental health has been covered from different perspectives. Some of the most important categories for the theoretical explanation of this relationship are also defined here. In addition to exploring those elements considered to be potentially dangerous, such as the hazards and demands deriving form the central elements of the work process, the exploration of the elements which provide the activity with qualitatively enriching content, deriving from the degree of control workers have over their work is also stressed. This involves the development of new knowledge and skills and the presence of these conditions has demonstrated a potencial for reducing the probability of the occurrence of physical and mental damage. The main damage to mental health among workers is systemised and stress is laid on the need to study more closely skeletal-muscular complaints, which are closely linked to so called psychosocial factors.

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La relación salud-trabajo. El caso de la Cooperativa Pascual.

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pascualOlivia López Arellano
Susana Martínez Alcántara
Cuauhtémoc Moreno Alba

En general la salud de los trabajadores ha sido considerada como objeto de estudio de técnicos sanitarios y especialistas en la materia, abordando la problemática de salud generada por el trabajo en términos de eliminación de riesgo específicos, o bien calificando exclusivamente a las enfermedades tipificadas en la legislación laboral.

Los propósitos de este estudio están enfocados a profundizar el conocimiento de la relación salud-trabajo, desde una perspectiva médico-social, en la Sociedad Cooperativa Pascual. Asimismo, poner en evidencia -en una situación concreta- que la participación de los trabajadores en el proceso investigativo es fundamental en la identificación de las condiciones laborales nocivas.

Se afirma que los trabajadores como participantes directos en el proceso laboral conocen las condiciones en que éste se desarrolla y los factores de riesgo presentes en el ambiente de trabajo.

La instrumentación del proceso de investigación se basó en el llamado Modelo Operario que retoma la experiencia obrera, la participación activa de los trabajadores y la apropiación de su problemática de salud, con el objeto de combatir la nocividad del medio laboral.

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Cooperativa Pascual: Lo Psiquico Laboral

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pascualSusana Martínez Alcantara
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana
Unidad Xochimilco

En los últimos años se ha hecho cada vez más evidente una mayor distribución diferencial de la morbi-mortalidad en relación estrecha con la clase social de pertenencia. Ante ese fenómeno, diversas disciplinas como la Medicina, la Psicología, la Sociología, la Antropología, etc. se ha abocado a tratar de identificar cuáles son los determinantes que condicionan el proceso salud-enfermedad (tanto en lo biológico como en lo psíquico) en formaciones económico-sociales como la mexicana. Dichas disciplinas intentan así trascender el estrecho margen explicativo de los modelos médicos (unicausal y multicausal) y conceptualizarlo como un proceso de doble carácter: social y biológico, tanto por su esencia misma como por su determinación, evitando la bilogización del objeto, sin sociologizarlo y considerando que lo social no se constituye desde los individuos sino desde los grupos por su inserción en el proceso productivo.

Esta manera alternativa de conceptualizar al proceso salud-enfermedad le confiere un carácter social, lo ubica históricamente y demuestra que la causalidad no se limita a elementos biológicos únicos o ecológicos, sino que su determinación se busca en la manera como se insertan los grupos en formaciones socio-económicas específicas, tipificando asimismo a dicho proceso con un carácter clasista.

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Cuestionario para la Evaluación del Síndrome de Quemarse por el Trabajo (CESQT)

Unidad de Investigación Psicosocial de la Conducta Organizacional
Universidad de Valencia, España.

Unipsico-UV