About Stockholm Stress Center

Stockholm Stress Center comprise of six collaborating research groups from the Stress Research Institute and the Department of Psychology at Stockholm University and also from the Department of Clinical Neuroscience and the Department of Public Health Sciences at Karolinska Institutet.
 

Centre of excellence

Within the collaboration between Stockholm University and Karolinska Institutet, the aim is to build a centre of excellence, with outstanding research in the field of work, stress and health and with the highest quality that can compete internationally. The combination of expertise is unique and will help create a new type of intellectual setting for stress research.
 

Funding

Stockholm Stress Center is funded by a grant of 50 million SEK spread over a ten year period from the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS) under the additional strengthening of the founding for research on working life that the government posted in 2008.
 

Organisation

An administrative unit for Stockholm Stress Center has been established at Stress Research Institute, Stockholm University. Director is Professor Torbjörn Åkerstedt and coordinator for the center and its activities is Louise Nordenskiöld. Ther is also a Steering group of partners, one from each main participating institute/department.
 

Background

Modern society is characterized by constant activity during the 24 hours of the day and 7 days per week. The work environment of the post-industrial society also involves constant accessibility, high demands on individual responsibility, fuzzy borders between work and private time, more flexible work hours characterized by a high degree of variability from week-to-week or even day-to-day, and job insecurity or temporariness. At the same time there is a new pattern of occupational diseases characterized by stress related disorders. This may be particularly true for Sweden, which has seen a doubling of long term sickness absence, sleep disturbances, fatigue, and anxiety from 1993 to 2003, followed by a leveling out during the recent years (ref.). It is well known that work related stress is a risk factor for several of the most common public health diseases, such as cardiovascular disease (Belkic et al., 2004) and depression (Stansfeld, Candy, 2006).

However, the landscape of work related stress has changed considerably and there is a lack of knowledge on how the post-industrial work environment affects health and disease. Although there is substantial evidence that stress causes disease the mechanisms are as yet not fully understood. A deeper understanding of the pathways between work-stress and disease is necessary in order to develop effective prevention and treatment.