by Marnie Dobson Zimmerman, PhD & Pouran Faghri, MD* Working from home was a luxury before the pandemic, and typically was composed of mostly people in professional, business, finance, management or freelance roles. Millions of American workers made a transition to “remote work” during the pandemic when employers complied with…

by Marnie Dobson Zimmerman, PhD & Pouran Faghri, MD* Work stress during the pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has been causing much uncertainty, anxiety, and stress, touching on nearly every aspect of our lives, and is likely to stay for a while more. Research has shown, long before the pandemic, that work stressors (sources of stress…

by Peter Schnall, MD, MPH* An epidemiologist walks into an airplane Prior to COVID-19, I was a frequent flyer: traveling internationally almost monthly for both work and personal reasons, and logging more than one million miles in the past decade. As a physician/epidemiologist, I have had a research and public health focus on working conditions and…

by Marnie Dobson Zimmerman, Ph.D., & Pouran Faghri, M.D. During the past few weeks in the U.S., the debate over school reopenings in the Fall, in light of COVID-19 surges, has been fever pitched. The negative mental health and academic impacts of social distancing and online learning on children are…

By Marnie Dobson Zimmerman, Ph.D.* Meet Sarah I’m on social media more than usual these days since the pandemic outbreak and stay-at-home order went into place. Questions that have been floating around among freelancers, not just in the spiritual communities, but also in the artistic, wellness, and literary worlds, are things like…

by Marnie Dobson Zimmerman, Ph.D. & Pouran Faghri M.D.* The dog barks. My husband yells at her to be quiet as he continues his Zoom call on mute. The kids can be heard arguing from the other side of our small house, playing video games on their iPads after completing…

By Peter Schnall, MD, MPH** I first became aware of the issue of burnout as an epidemic among physicians a few years ago when I went to see my internist for my annual medical checkup. Knowing that I was a physician who worked as an occupational health researcher investigating work…

By Marnie Dobson Zimmerman, PhD & Peter Schnall, MD MPH* Burnout is the feeling that everything is wrong with your job and that no matter how much sleep you get, you just can’t get over this feeling of complete exhaustion when you leave work and when you think about going…

by Marnie Dobson Zimmerman, PhD United States of Stress Everyday we hear more and more stories in the media about the stressed-out U.S. workforce. One in 3 U.S. workers report typically feeling stressed during a work day, while 3 out of 5 workers cite work stress as the most significant…