Perceived workplace harassment experiences and problem drinking among physicians: broadening the stress/alienation paradigm

Sociologists who embrace the stress or alienation paradigms generally focus on explaining problem drinking in low status occupations. By contrast, this paper argues that a broadened conceptualization of stress and alienation which incorporates abusive work relationships has utility for explaining ma...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Addiction (Abingdon, England) England), 1996-03, Vol.91 (3), p.391-403
Main Authors: RICHMAN, JUDITH A., FLAHERTY, JOSEPH A., ROSPENDA, KATHLEEN M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Alcohol
Alcoholism
Alcoholism - psychology
Alienation
Biological and medical sciences
Cohort Studies
Doctors
Factors
Female
Gender Identity
Harassment
Health
Health and social institutions
Health participants
House officers
Humans
Internship and Residency
Male
Medical sciences
Mental stress
Physician Impairment - psychology
Problem drinking
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Risk Factors
Sexual harassment
Sexual Harassment - psychology
Social Alienation
Social problems
USA
Work place
Workload - psychology
Workplace
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Summary:Sociologists who embrace the stress or alienation paradigms generally focus on explaining problem drinking in low status occupations. By contrast, this paper argues that a broadened conceptualization of stress and alienation which incorporates abusive work relationships has utility for explaining male and female drinking outcomes in both high and low status occupations. We provide empirical data on the relationship between perceived abusive experiences and drinking outcomes in a cohort of male and female physicians in their internship year of training. The data show that perceived sexual harassment, discriminatory treatment and psychological humiliation relate to various drinking outcomes in men and women, controlling for drinking prior to the internship year. While females were more likely to report experiencing abuse, these perceived experiences had deleterious effects on drinking outcomes for both genders. Personal vulnerability (narcissism) brought into the training environment somewhat influenced the later reporting of abusive experiences by males but not by females. Regression analyses showed that, for both males and females, work‐place abusive experiences in interaction with personality vulnerability best explained drinking outcomes. The implications of these results far the design of future alcohol‐related work‐place studies are discussed.
ISSN:0965-2140
1360-0443
DOI:10.1046/j.1360-0443.1996.9133918.x