Work climate, work stress and alcohol consumption in workers in the industry. A systematic review

Abstract

Background: The negative work climate influences the maladjustment of the staff and there are labor, physiological and psychological consequences in the workers. Work stress can appear as a result of the relationship between the individual, the work environment and the individual perception of threatening factors derived from work, which endangers physical, psychological and social well-being and increases the probability of alcohol consumption. Alcohol consumption is a frequent behavior in the working population, as a negative coping with stress. The objective of this work was to know the state of the art of the relationship between the work environment, work stress and alcohol consumption in workers.

Methods: Systematic review of primary studies in English, Portuguese and Spanish from 2009 to 2019, the study population was workers of both sexes. Search in multiple databases: PubMed, Scielo, Scopus, EBSCO Host, Redalyc; the Google Scholar search engine was used to obtain full-text documents. Three reviewers participated in the data selection and extraction process independently, agreeing on the results.

Results: 533 studies were found, of which 17 met the eligibility criteria. An association was identified between the work environment (work environment) and/or work stress with the consumption of alcohol in the working population, a meta-analysis was also analyzed which concludes that the workers who presented greater work stress were low-risk drinkers of 20 g/day (2 UBEs) for men and 10 g/day (1 UBE) for women; and risk drinkers with 40 g/d (4 UBEs/day) in men and >20-25 g/d (2-2.5 UBEs/day) in women.

Conclusions: The work environment and work stress predict alcohol consumption and the type of alcohol consumption in workers.