Alterations of Eating Behaviour Related To Workplace Suffering.

The aim of this research is the evaluation of changes in eating behaviour and their extent in a sample of patients followed by our centre. For 12 months we tracked a sample of 86 patients (44 male and 42 female) aged between 28 and 67 years (average 49 years), chosen at random from patients of the Clinical Centre for the Psychopathology of Work. Participants responded to a questionnaire, both at the beginning and the end of the research period, regarding their eating behaviour and the use of psychoactive substances (smoking and alcohol consumption). The Body Mass Index (BMI) of the participants was calculated each month over the 12 months of observation. Analysis of the data indicates that a significant percentage of the participants showed a change in eating behaviour (p>0.05). Among participants only 6.9% remained at a constant body weight, 69.8% registered an increase and 23.2% a decrease. Such values would indicate that patients affected by workplace bullying do not only demonstrate psychopathological repercussions but also a series of potential endocrine-metabolic complications as a possible consequence of neuroendocrine modification deriving from malnutrition, either through over or under eating. Evidence of this kind might be expected to stimulate the specialized institutions concerned with work problems to consider the pathology in terms of innested structures at various levels; existential, social, professional and psychiatric as well as biological and endocrine-metabolic.