Heart and Psyche: The Incidence of Occupational Stress on Cardiovascular Diseases

The present-day shortage in labor supply, the need to hold on to one's employment at all costs often causes the employee to be subjected to protracted stressful stimuli resulting in pathophysiological reactions of the organism. Cardiovascular diseases have increased in recent decades and they are not necessarily related to specific clinical risk factors, but often only with environmental factors, occurring in those who lack the ability to resist, but are merely victims. Hypertensive disease are rising and manifesting in increasingly younger ages, as are cardiac disturbances including atrial fibrillation. An increase in heart attacks and coronary arteries has been reported (Templin et al., 2015). A stressed out worker ideally flees from the stressor, but the consequential hormonal mechanisms often create organ damage (Molinari, Compare, Parati, 2007; Mucci et al., 2015a). Therefore abnormal work conditions can trigger pathophysiological reactions in initially healthy organisms, or unmask cardiovascular diseases in patients who are susceptible to personal risk factors, antedating their manifestation. This dissertation aims to investigate the factors that characterize "work related stress", to link them to the historical period in progress, to analyze the consequences that these factors have on the human body, both from a psychological and physiological point of view.