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Introduction Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are disorders of the musculoskeletal system that have the highest prevalence among workers worldwide. Workers in gas stations usually work in poor ergonomic working conditions, including prolonged standing and repetitive posturing.Objective The study aimed to investigate the prevalence of WMSDs and fatigue and to identify the predictors of WMSDs among gas station workers.Design The present study was a cross-sectional study.Setting and participants 2962 gas station workers from an oil and gas company in China, with ages ranging from 17 to 75 years old, 55.47% female.Results The prevalence of WMSDs within the 12 months prior to the study was 73.23%, with the highest prevalence in the neck, shoulders, ankles and feet. Furthermore, a correlation was observed between fatigue, stress and WMSDs. Fatigue and job role were the strongest predictors of WMSDs, with an OR range of 2.211–3.413.Conclusions This research identified the detrimental impact of WMSDs and fatigue on gas station workers, indicating the critical need for interventions to reduce WMSDs and relieve fatigue.

The COVID-19 pandemic raised many challenges for university staff and students, including the need to work from home, which resulted in a greater reliance on technology. We collected questionnaire data from university students (N = 894) in three European countries: Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Data were collected between 7th April 2020 and 19th June 2020, representing a period covering the first lockdown and university closures in these countries and across Europe generally. We tested the hypotheses that technology-related stressors (techno-overload, work-home conflict, techno-ease, techno-reliability, techno-sociality, and pace of change) would be associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms, and that coping styles (problem-focused, emotion-focused, and avoidance) would mediate these relationships. Results showed significant positive associations between techno-overload, work-home conflict and anxiety and depressive symptoms, and significant negative associations between techno-reliability, techno-ease and anxiety and depressive symptoms. A significant negative association was found between techno-sociality and depressive symptoms but not anxiety symptoms. No evidence was found for an association between pace of change and anxiety or depressive symptoms. Multiple mediation analyses revealed significant direct effects of techno-overload, work-home conflict and techno-ease on anxiety symptoms, and of work-home conflict and techno-ease on depressive symptoms. Work-home conflict had significant indirect effects on anxiety and depressive symptoms through avoidance coping. Techno-overload and techno-ease both had significant indirect effects on anxiety symptoms through problem- and emotion-focused coping. Techno-ease also had a significant indirect effect on depressive symptoms through problem-focused coping. The findings add to the body of evidence on technostress amongst university students and provide knowledge on how technostress translates through coping strategies into anxious and depressive symptoms during the disruption caused by the outbreak of a pandemic disease.

Aims and ObjectivesTo investigate how changes in the levels of preparedness and experiences of death and dying influence nursing students’ mental health.BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic is likely to cause significant trauma in the nursing population. The lack of preparation, in combination with a substantial loss of life, may have implications for the longer-term mental health of the nursing workforce. Nursing students have, in many cases, been an important part of the emergency response.DesignA longitudinal cohort study was conducted in the academic year 2014/15 with data collected at two time points. There was a 7-month time period between data collection.MethodsParticipants completed paper-based questionnaires measuring demographics, academic stressors, clinical stressors, and mental health. 358 nursing students at time point one and 347 at time point two (97% retention) completed the survey.ResultsInadequate preparation (OR: 1.783) and the inadequate preparation x death and dying interaction term (OR: 4.115) significantly increased risk of mental health problems over time. Increased death and dying alone did not increase mental health risk.ConclusionThe results of this study suggest that it is not the increase in death and dying per se that causes mental health difficulties, but that it is instead the experience of high levels of death and dying in combination with inadequate preparation. The data are considered within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, with both inadequate preparation and the scale of death and dying being two significant stressors during the emergency period.

Although caffeine is sometimes associated with beneficial effects in adults, concern has been expressed that the substance may be dangerous if intake is too high, and particularly so when used by children and adolescents. For this reason, the current study examined data from the Cornish Academies Project to determine whether caffeine consumption in secondary school children was related to responses to a single-item measure of general health. Because two cross-sections of data were available, these relationships were explored both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. High caffeine consumption (i.e. >1000 mg/w) was associated with low general health in both cross-sections of data. However, after controlling for additional aspects of diet, demography, and lifestyle, this effect only remained significant at the latter time-point. Further to this, null findings from cross-lag and change-score analyses suggested that caffeine and general health were unlikely to be causally linked in this sample. However, due to methodological limitations, such as the two cross-sections of data being collected only six months apart, it is suggested that further longitudinal and intervention studies are required in order for firm conclusions to be drawn.

Background/Aims: Research has shown that migraine is often associated with memory problems. There have, however, been few studies of tension type headache (TTH) and cognition. People who report frequent headaches often report high levels of negative affect. However, less is known about the acute effects of tension type headache on mood. To address these gaps in our knowledge, two studies examined the effects of acute TTH on cognitive performance and mood. Methods: Both studies involved one group of participants completing a battery of tasks when they had a TTH and when they had no headache. Another group (the control) was headache free on both occasions. Duration of the headache was greater than 30 minutes and less than 4 hours. In the no headache condition the participants were headache free for at least 24 hours. In the first study 12 participants (6 with TTH, 6 controls) completed a computerised battery measuring mood and aspects of cognition. In the second study 22 participants (7 TTH, 5 after TTH and10 controls) completed paper and pencil mood and cognitive tasks.Results: In the first study having a headache was associated with an increase in negative affect both before and after the tasks. Three performance tasks showed impairments when the participants had headaches: logical reasoning was slower and less accurate; retrieval from semantic memory was slower; and reaction times in the categoric search task were slower. Results from the second study confirmed the global increase in negative affect when the person has a TTH. The results confirmed the impairments in the logical reasoning and semantic processing tasks and also showed that those with a TTH had greater psychomotor slowing and were more easily distracted. Effects did not continue after the headache had gone.Conclusions: Two small-scale studies have shown that TTH is associated with negative affect and impaired cognitive function. It is now of interest to determine whether OTC treatment can remove these effects.

A considerable amount of research suggests that breakfast omission and the frequent use of caffeinated energy drinks may be associated with undesirable effects, and particularly so in children and adolescents. The current paper presents cross-sectional and longitudinal data from the Cornish Academies Project to investigate the effects of consuming energy drinks and missing breakfast on stress, anxiety, and depression in a cohort of secondary school children from the South West of England. Questionnaires were administered at two time-points (spaced six months apart) to collect information relating to diet and lifestyle over the previous six months, demographic and school data were acquired through the School Information Management System, and single-item measures of stress, anxiety, and depression were administered at the second time-point only. Associations between breakfast and energy drink consumption and stress, anxiety, and depression were investigated, and a multivariate approach was taken so that additional variance from diet, demography, and lifestyle could be controlled for statistically. Cross-sectional analyses showed that breakfast omission was consistently associated with negative outcomes, and that this was largely observed for both those who frequently consumed energy drinks and those who did not. However, cross-lag analyses showed that neither breakfast omission or energy drink consumption, alone or in combination, was predictive of stress, anxiety, or depression at six-month follow-up. This suggests that associations between breakfast and mental health may be bi-directional rather than breakfast being the causal factor.

Background/Aims: Recent research has shown associations between type of snack and wellbeing. These studies have been cross-sectional and the aim of the present research was to examine this topic using an intervention study.Methods: A between subjects intervention study was carried out. Volunteers (100students, mean age = 19.00 years; 27 male, 73 female) completed online questionnaires measuring anxiety and depression; fatigue, somatic symptoms, cognitive difficulties and distress at baseline. They were then randomly assigned to one of two snacking conditions – chocolate/crisps or fruit. Volunteers consumed one snack item in the mid-afternoon each day for 10 days. At the end of the intervention the volunteers completed the questionnaires again.Results: Analyses of the baseline data confirmed that consumption of chocolate was associated with greater emotional eating and depression. Analyses of covariance, with the baseline data as covariates, were carried out on the post-intervention responses. The results showed that consumption of fruit was associated with lower anxiety, depression and emotional distress than consumption of crisps/chocolate. Similarly, scores for somatic symptoms, cognitive difficulties and fatigue were greater in the crisps/chocolate condition.Conclusions: These results extend findings from cross-sectional studies and give a clearer indication of causal effects of different types of snacks on wellbeing.