Migrant workers show an increase in the incidence of serious, psychotic, anxiety, and post-traumatic disorders due to a series of socio-environmental variables, such as loss of social status, discrimination, and separations from the family. The purpose is to elaborate a systematic review and highlight the prevailing psychological pathologies of these workers and categories most at risk. Our research included articles published from 2009 to 2019 on the major databases (Pub Med, Cochrane Library, and Scopus) using a combination of some keywords. The online search indicated 1.228 references. Using inclusion and exclusion criteria, we analyzed 127 articles, in particular 12 reviews and 115 original articles. Principal emerging disorders from the research are depressive syndrome (poor concentration at work, feeling down, or anger and somatization), anxiety, alcohol or substance abuse, and poor sleep quality. This causes low life conditions, which is also due to marginalization from the social context and strenuous work; in fact, migrant workers may suffer verbal or physical abuse, and they are often employed in dangerous, unhealthy jobs. It is therefore essential to increase the role of occupational medicine and promote wellbeing for this vulnerable job category.
The findings suggest that chronic occupational exposure to urban pollutants reduces resistance to physical effort and increases the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory changes including slight hypoxemia.
Introduction The perception of psychosocial risks exposes workers to develop work-related stress. Recently the attention of scientific research has focused on a psychosocial risk already identified as “job insecurity” that regards the “overall concern about the continued existence of the job in the future” and that also depends on worker's perception, different for each gender. Aim of the Study The aim of this cross sectional study is to show if job insecurity, in the form of temporary contracts, can influence the perception of psychosocial risks and therefore increase worker's vulnerability to work-related stress and how the magnitude of this effect differs between genders. Materials and Methods 338 administrative technical workers (113 males and 225 females) were administered a questionnaire, enquiring contract typology (permanent or temporary contracts), and the Health Safety Executive questionnaire to assess work-related stress. The Health Safety Executive Analysis Tool software was used to process collected questionnaires and the Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used to evaluate the statistical significance of the differences obtained. Results Workers with temporary contracts obtained lower scores than workers with permanent contracts in all the domains explored by the Health Safety Executive Analysis questionnaire, statistically significant (P<0,05). The female workers obtained lower scores than male workers in all domains explored by the Health Safety Executive questionnaire. Conclusions Authors conclude that perception of psychosocial risks can be influenced by job insecurity, in the form of temporary contracts, and increases worker's vulnerability to work-related stress and differs between genders.
Background Quality of working life is the result of many factors inherent in the workplace environment, especially in terms of exposure to psychosocial risks. Objectives The purpose of this study is to assess the quality of life with special attention to gender differences. Methods The HSE-IT questionnaire and the WHO-5 Well-Being Index were administered to a group of workers (74 males and 33 females). The authors also used Cronbach's alpha test to assess the internal consistency of both questionnaires and the Mann–Whitney test to evaluate the significance of gender differences in both questionnaires. Results The HSE-IT highlighted the existence of work-related stress in all the population with a critical perception regarding the domain “Relationships.” Furthermore, gender analysis highlighted the presence of two additional domains in the female population: “Demand” (p = 0,002) and “Support from Managers” (p = 0,287). The WHO-5 highlighted a well-being level below the standard cut-off point with a significant gender difference (p = 0.009) for males (18, SD = 6) as compared to females (14, SD = 6,4). Cronbach's alpha values indicated a high level of internal consistency for both of our scales. Conclusions The risk assessment of quality of working life should take into due account the individual characteristics of workers, with special attention to gender.
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