Estresse e suporte social em profissionais do setor de segurança pessoal e patrimonial

Abstract

Studies about policemen point out that they constitute one of the professional groups with the highest rate of stress. So, this study was developed aiming to evaluate occupational stress factors and to relate stress with social support in a sample of civil policemen of a Public Safety Police Station. The study was developed in two phases, in which different methodologies were adopted. On phase one, forty policemen participated as volunteers and we tried to identify the general stressing factors of the policemen work and to investigate the forms of dealing with stress, using a semi-structured interview. After content analysis, 222 answers on occupational stressors were obtained and they were classified in 18 categories related to work characteristics, relationship with colleagues and superiors, the police negative image by society and media, and lack of legal and governmental support to the police work. The strategies used to deal with stress produced 86 answers, so that the majority uses the symptoms management, as self-control, family support, leisure, exercises practice, religion and a positive attitude. On the phase two 96 subjects participated, corresponding to approximately 50% of the Police Station staff, with the objectives of analyzing the social support, the stress level, and its symptoms as reported. The instrument was self-answered and had questions about demographic and professional data, the Stress Symptoms Inventory for Adults and the Social Support Questionnaire. The answers were typed on SPSS for Windows to proceed the analysis. The results indicated that over 50% of the sample was diagnosed with stress, already on resistance/nearly exhaustion or exhaustion phase. On the variables crossing analysis, it was verified that most of the higher educated group of subjects showed stress and the higher the working hours of the week, the higher the stress level. When the kind of stress symptom was analyzed, it was verified that among the 51 subjects that were stressed, 25 had mostly psychological symptoms and 20 had mostly physical symptoms, according to the correction table of ISSL. The Perceived Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ-N) indicated that the majority perceives two people as supportive and they are between reasonably satisfied and a little satisfied with this support. The ANOVAs showed difference between the averages in social support of the not stressed group, in comparison to those on the resistance/nearly exhaustion phase and the ones on the exhaustion phase. So, the least social support they perceive, the worse the stress phase they are. However, this difference was not significant for the N index, which represents the average number of people perceived as supportive on all the situations of the SSQ-N. Concerning the social support satisfaction (S index), it was verified that the more satisfied with social support, the less stressed. The perceived social support (N index) correlated negatively to the three measurements of stress symptoms from ISSL, indicating that the larger the number of supportive people, the smaller the amount of symptoms the subject points. The satisfaction with the social support (S index) correlated positively with the stress symptoms on the three periods, so the more satisfied the subject was with the social support perceived, also smaller the number of stress symptoms, which confirms the main hypothesis of this study. It was possible to conclude that the methodology used allowed an organizational diagnosis that overcomes the health/stress issue, by the identification of problems on the infrastructure of work, on the tasks organization and on relationship among staff and theirs towards society. Keeping in mind the concept and the levels of analysis of Organizational Behavior, this study confirms that work stress is an individual, group and organizational matter.