Current research projects

Need of mental health service utilization in commuters

Only little research has been done so far on the impact of commuting on physical and mental health as well as possible positive effects. Due to changes in settlement patterns and availability of workplaces the rate of working people forced to commute will increase during the next years. In sum commuters complain more about health problems, especially psychosomatic symptoms, and tend to more absenteeism from work due to illness. Especially long-distance commuting (more than 45 min in one way) seems to be an additional enormous stress factor in the long term. Risk-groups are commuting women, having higher psychological stress-scores, and shift workers reporting higher frequencies of symptoms and higher degrees of impairment. Therefore preventive measures have been demanded but up to now they have not been realized. Neither do we know if commuters are able to benefit from the health care system, especially from psychosocial counselling. Despite a high prevalence of psychic disorders, commuters seem to be a neglected group in the utilization of mental health services.

Need for psychosocial counselling and mental health service utilization in train-commuters

The study done in cooperation with the German railway company Deutsche Bahn AG will include 200 commuters in trains on the relations Stuttgart - Ulm, Stuttgart - Aalen, Stuttgart - Heidelberg, Stuttgart - Mannheim, Stuttgart - Tübingen - Albstadt-Ebingen, Stuttgart - Karlsruhe and Stuttgart - Heilbronn. The aim of the study is the assessment of risk-factors of commuters and if an improvement of the psychosocial situation of commuters is possible. Choice of transportation, time and personal reasons for commuting are assessed by a new questionnaire for commuters developed by the Center for Psychotherapy Research. Moreover, the probands will be given the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ 45.2) and the short version of the Giessen-Subjective Complaints List (GSCL). Given the acceptance the probands are asked for a personal interview or an interview by phone in order to complete a questionnaire on previous demand for treatment in response to psychic symptoms, a questionnaire on need for psychosocial counselling, the Life Satisfaction Questionnaire (FLZ), the questionnaire for social support (F-SOZU), the Freiburg Personality Inventory (FPI), the IPC-questionnaire on locus of control (a German adaptation of the IPC-scales from Levenson) and the Munich Event List (MEL). For reason of comparison, a randomized sample of 200 non-commuters parallelized for age and gender will be investigated, too. The data collection will take place from January 2002 to December 2002.




Publications about "Commuter":

Häfner, S., Kordy, H., Kächele, H. (2001): Psychosozialer Versorgungsbedarf bei Berufspendlern (Need of mental health care in commuters). Psychother Psychosom med Psychol 51, 373-376.

Häfner, S., Kordy, H., Kächele, H. (2001): Psychosozialer Versorgungsbedarf bei Berufspendlern (Need of mental health care in commuters). Psychother Psychosom med Psychol 51, T55-T61 [Online]. Available HTTP: www.thieme.de/ppmp




The results of this study are presented in English language at

19.6.-22.6.2002:

24th European Conference on Psychosomatic Research, Lisboa
Häfner, S., Kordy, H., Kächele, H.: Train-commuters' need for psychosocial counselling and mental health service utilization.

14.-18.8.2002:

18th World Congress of Psychotherapy (WCP), Trondheim
Häfner, S., Kordy, H., Kächele, H.: Railway commuters' need of mental health care.