Agentes penitenciários: avaliação do estresse no ambiente de trabalho.

Abstract

Stress is the result of an adaptive action, an exacerbated reaction of the subject in response to determined external circumstances, and it may be positive or negative. It may interfere in the human relations and in productivity, since it affects people’s health, both physically and psychologically. Occupational stress focuses on stressors related to the workplace, such as work overload, organizational constraints, tiredness, professional expectation deficiency, among others. Leisure is considered relevant in the individuals’ lives, inducing a balance between the job demands and the individual claims. The correctional officer carries out a high risk job, protecting society through penal treatment, investigation and vigilance of the prisoner in the prison system, being many times vulnerable to health problems. Thus, the research has aimed to analyze the level of occupational stress in correctional officers from a Female Public Prison in the municipality of Cajazeiras, PB. It is an exploratory study with quantitative approach, carried out with eleven correctional officers. It was used two (02) instruments for the data collection, the first one consisted of a form developed by the researcher herself for the socio-demographic characterization of the population and the second one was a Workplace Stress Scale (WSS), which consists of twenty-three (23) items which approach emotional stressors in the workplace. In order to account the data referent to the socio-demographic characterization of the study it was used Microsoft Office 2007, through the absolute and percent frequency indices, with representation through tables. The data related to the stress scale were analyzed statistically with the software Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 17.0. The results evidenced that most of the study participants were female, single, between 27 to 46 years old and that they were satisfied with their jobs, nonetheless, only five of these individuals practiced some physical exercise. The correctional officers have extra activities to relieve the tensions that the work causes, such as walking, going out with friends and family, listening to music, traveling, sleeping, among others. Concerning the assessment of the stress intensity, it was observed that most of the population has light stress, with a total value of 08 (72.7%) participants on this item, corresponding to a score between 1.00 to 2.00, however, 03 (27.3%) individuals have moderate stress with a score between 2.01 to 4.00, and none of the participants is in the severe stress item. It is concluded that even though it is a profession which involves risks and tensions, the stress located did not seem compromising for the correctional officers. Generally speaking, it is noticed that the penitentiary system lacks scientific study, mainly among the correctional officers. It is important, therefore, that these studies contemplate a transversal and interdisciplinary aspect.