Prevalence of Depressive Symptoms and Related Factors in Japanese Employees as Measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D)

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the prevalence of depressive symptoms and related factors in Japan. For this purpose, a questionnaire including the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) was administered to employees from Akita prefecture, Japan. The cutoff point for CES-D scores was 16 or above (high scorers). We analyzed the results of this survey in order to identify relationships between the prevalence of high scores on the CES-D, sociodemographic status, and employment-related variables. In total, 2,220 employees-of whom 1,069 were men and 1,151, women-satisfactorily responded, and their responses indicated that 45.0 % (41.4 % for men, 48.2 % for women) had high scores on the CES-D. The identified sociodemographic and occupation-related factors from the binomial multivariate logistic regression for high scorers were as follows: a high risk of depression was associated with being women, short and/or long sleep durations, the occasional consumption of alcohol in men, and professional work and over 8 h of work per day in women. Older age groups and non-smoking women were associated with a lower risk. These results can be used in the future as CES-D benchmark values, and might be useful in predicting the occurrence of depressive disorders.

Gender Differences in Depressive Symptoms and Work Environment Factors among Dairy Farmers in Japan

“…Compared to older participants, young and middle-aged participants were at greater risk of depressive symptoms. This finding is consistent with a previous study conducted on Japanese employees in companies [36]. Based on this evidence, attention to this age population is needed to prevent mental health problems.…”

“…In this study, the prevalence rates of depressive symptoms based on CES-D scores of 16 points or more were 17.3% in males and 31.7% in females. While few studies have been conducted on farmers in Japan, the prevalence in males seemed to be relatively lower than those cited in previous evidence, using the CES-D with the same cut off point for workers and middle-aged adults in Japan, which range from 23% to 48% [35][36][37]. Our results also indicated that males had a lower prevalence of depressive symptoms than females, which was consistent with other previous studies [21,38,39].…”

Prevalence and Associated Factors of Depressive Symptoms among Chinese Underground Coal Miners

“…The scale consists of 20 items with 4 options that describe the frequency of respondents' feelings in the past week ranging from 0 “rarely or none of the time (less than 1 day)” to 3 “most or all of the time (5 to 7 days).” The severity of depressive symptoms increases with a higher summed score that ranges from 0 to 60. To estimate the prevalence of depressive symptoms, a CES-D score of ≥16 was defined as “depressive symptoms” in this study [4, 6, 31]. The CES-D scale has demonstrated good reliability and validity in the Chinese occupational population [6, 31].…”

Correlates of Depression in the Slovenian Working Population

“…The prevalence of depression in the working population of some countries seems to vary between 5 % and 10 % (13-16). Possible risk factors for the development of depression in the working population include female gender, alcohol consumption, high psychological demands of a job, psychosocial work stressors, job insecurity, and drug abuse (17).…”