Psychological factors including sense of coherence and some lifestyles are related to general health questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12) in elderly workers in Japan

Abstract

Objectives: The number of elderly workers has also been increasing and poor psychological wellbeing in elderly workers has been reported. The aim of this study is to elucidate the factors that are related to poor psychological well-being in elderly workers.Methods: We administered General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12) as an indicator of psychological well-being to 330 male elderly workers in the age range of 50-69, and analyzed different psychological factors, namely sense of coherence (SOC), and physical and lifestyle variables such as blood pressure, serum total cholesterol, smoking frequency, alcohol intake, exercise frequency, and body mass index (BMI) that are related to GHQ-12.Results: When the cut-off point of GHQ-12 was 2/3, 97 workers who showed high GHQ-12 score were classified as one group having poor psychological well-being. A statistically significantly lower SOC score, higher stress score, lower frequency of exercise, higher smoking score and higher BMI, but not longer working hours or higher shift work score in the workers with higher GHQ-12 scores were observed than in the workers with normal GHQ-12 scores. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that the low SOC score, low frequency of exercise, high smoking frequency and high BMI significantly contributed to the high GHQ-12 score.Conclusions: A low SOC score in elderly workers is assumed to be directly related to poor psychological well-being, or via the development of lifestyle problems such as lack of exercise, obesity, and smoking in elderly workers. This assumption must be confirmed by conducting future intervention studies on lifestyle.

Common risk factors for changes in body weight and psychological well-being in Japanese male middle-aged workers

“…In this study, therefore, we tried to examine risk factors common to weight gain and deterioration of psychological well-being in relatively elderly workers. Our previous cross-sectional study on psychological, behavioral, and physical problems in workers suggests that low SOC score, low frequency of exercise, high-smoking frequency, and high BMI significantly contributed to high-GHQ-12 score in relatively elder workers [11]. However, it is very much noteworthy that the risk factors which we extracted in this study were not only for high GHQ-12, but also for weight gain in middle-aged workers.…”

“…Taken together with such a close relationship between SOC and stress coping, our results imply that inappropriate stress coping leads to body weight gain and to poorer psychological well-being. Although life stress event and job stress including SOC are important risk factors for poor psychological well-being [11,33,34,36], our finding that low SOC leads to subsequent body weight gain in older workers is very striking. The cohort study followed-up over 14 years by Chandola et al [8,37], who examined cumulative work stress, using the Job Strain Questionnaire on four occasions, as a predictor of obesity in a prospective 19-year study of 6,895 men and 3,413 women (aged 35-55 years) in the Whitehall II cohort in London, UK (baseline: 1985-1988), reported a dose-response relationship between work stress and risk of general obesity (BMI 30 kg/m 2 ).…”

“…Peterson and Dunnagen [49] reported that regular exercise was found to promote job-satisfaction. Because considering the mental health condition of elderly workers is very important problem [10,11], we must focus on a further intervention study in which exercise should be incorporated in a health educational program for workers.…”

“…Therefore, it is an urgent task to study the ideal work environment for workers, and their psychological well-being, to improve the mental health condition of workers. This is considered to be an exceedingly important problem in our society [10,11].…”

Unhealthy Mental States Are Positively Associated with Subjective Pain or Fatigue in Specific Body Sites among High School Teachers in Japan

“…For the GHQ-12 we used the 0-0-1-1 scoring method. The GHQ scoring has been widely adopted in previous studies [13] [14] [15]. We gave 0 point for the positive answers and 1 point for the negative answers.…”