Sick from stress II: The road to a sustainable life
Stress has been dubbed the health epidemic of the 21th century by the WHO and comes at devastating costs for both the individual and society. During the last decade we have seen an increase in long-term sick leave due to stress often caused by an unbalanced work-load both at home and at work. It is a high priority to develop viable methods to support people with stress-related diseases and to get a deeper understanding of the recovery process to a balanced and sustainable life. The main purpose of this project is to examine the recovery process from stress-related exhaustion with a special focus on cognitive functions. This will be done by using data from a recently finished study where we investigated the effects of cognitive and physical training to that of treatment as usual on cognitive functioning and psychological health in patients with stress-related exhaustion disorder. The participants were tested on a broad neuropsychological battery at four time points: before, immediately as well as one and four year after training.To address long-term effects to gain knowledge about factors central to recovery and return to work is of outmost importance. This project will provide new and unique knowledge about recovery as a function of cognitive and physical training as a complement to treatment as usual. This research is timely from a societal perspective, important for the patient group and urgent as the current field lack studies on cognitive recovery.
Final report
Stress has been dubbed the health epidemic of the 21th century by the World Health Organization and comes at great costs for both the individual afflicted and society. During the last decade, we have seen an increase in long-term sick leave due to stress-related illnesses often caused by an unbalanced work-load both at home and at work. It is a high priority to develop viable methods to support people with stress-related illness and to get a better understanding of the recovery process to a balanced and sustainable life.
The main purpose of this project was to examine the long-term recovery from stress-related exhaustion with a special focus on cognitive functions. This was done using data from the RECO-trial (ClinicalTrial.gov: NCT03073772) examining the effects of cognitive and physical training as add-on treatments to that of treatment as usual on cognitive functioning, psychological health and workability in patients with stress-related exhaustion disorder. Also, a healthy control group was included but did not receive treatment. The participants were tested on a broad neuropsychological battery at four time points: before, immediately, one and four to five years after treatment. Furthermore, the patients were interviewed about their recovery process six to eight years after training. The results revealed that both groups receiving the cognitive or the physical add-on interventions benefited more in terms of better self-reported psychological health and workability four to five years after completion of treatment compared to treatment as usual. In terms of cognitive performance, all three groups improved performance across time but only the group receiving cognitive training showed significantly greater improvements in tasks tapping working memory, cognitive flexibility and episodic memory. Moreover, despite improvements across time in psychological health the patient group still reported more psychological distress and lower health-related quality of life four to five years later compared to the healthy control group. The interview data further substantiated these findings by showing that the patients experienced a slow recovery from stress-related exhaustion and only few former patients experienced being fully recovered six to eight years after completion of the treatment. Taken together, stress-related exhaustion has long-term consequences for cognition, psychological health and workability and recovery benefits when treatment supports cognitive functioning and physical activity. Future research should replicate and extend these findings.
The main purpose of this project was to examine the long-term recovery from stress-related exhaustion with a special focus on cognitive functions. This was done using data from the RECO-trial (ClinicalTrial.gov: NCT03073772) examining the effects of cognitive and physical training as add-on treatments to that of treatment as usual on cognitive functioning, psychological health and workability in patients with stress-related exhaustion disorder. Also, a healthy control group was included but did not receive treatment. The participants were tested on a broad neuropsychological battery at four time points: before, immediately, one and four to five years after treatment. Furthermore, the patients were interviewed about their recovery process six to eight years after training. The results revealed that both groups receiving the cognitive or the physical add-on interventions benefited more in terms of better self-reported psychological health and workability four to five years after completion of treatment compared to treatment as usual. In terms of cognitive performance, all three groups improved performance across time but only the group receiving cognitive training showed significantly greater improvements in tasks tapping working memory, cognitive flexibility and episodic memory. Moreover, despite improvements across time in psychological health the patient group still reported more psychological distress and lower health-related quality of life four to five years later compared to the healthy control group. The interview data further substantiated these findings by showing that the patients experienced a slow recovery from stress-related exhaustion and only few former patients experienced being fully recovered six to eight years after completion of the treatment. Taken together, stress-related exhaustion has long-term consequences for cognition, psychological health and workability and recovery benefits when treatment supports cognitive functioning and physical activity. Future research should replicate and extend these findings.