Work-related psychosocial risk factors and psychiatric disorders: A cross-sectional study in the French working population

Abstract

The study estimates the prevalence of probable psychiatric disorder in the working population, determines the proportion of people presenting a probable psychiatric disorder among people exposed to work-related psychosocial risk factors (PSRFs), and identifies which PSRF has the strongest association with having a probable psychiatric disorder. MethodsA cross-sectional study conducted in March 2018 involved a representative sample of the French working population. The General Health Questionnaire 28 (GHQ-28) was used to estimate the prevalence of probable psychiatric disorder and 44 items were gathered from theoretical models of PSRFs. We used multiple logistic regression to estimate the association of each PSRF with having a probable psychiatric disorder, adjusted on individual, health, and job confounders. ResultsThis study involved 3200 French participants. The proportion of probable psychiatric disorder was 22.2% [20.6; 24.0]. Ten PSRFs were significantly associated with it. The strongest association was for having problems handling professional and personal responsibilities (reported by 15% of the study population) (OR = 1.97 [1.52; 2.54]), with 45% pathological GHQ-28 scores (potential psychiatric cases) for people exposed to this PSRF versus 18% non-exposed. The next strongest association was lack of support of colleagues (reported by 28%) (OR = 1.63 [1.29; 2.06]). The third strongest association was feeling sometimes afraid when doing the job (reported by 63%) (OR = 1.53, [1.21; 1.93]).

Job Dissatisfaction Mediated the Associations Between Work Stress and Mental Health Problems

“…These situations are likely to be stressful; thus, psychological disorders may increasingly be caused by work-related stressors ( 40 ). The job strain model (demand-control-support model) has already been confirmed in a large number of studies on employees in developed countries, and many psychosocial work factors have been linked to mental health problems ( 4 , 32 ). Recently, studies have suggested that other exposures may play a role in mental disorders (such as effort–reward imbalance and workplace bullying) ( 41 ).…”

“…It is reported that the global point prevalence of depression in the working population ranged from 3.73 to 19.0% ( 1 – 3 ). For anxiety, another prevalent mental health problem across the world, the prevalence of anxiety among the working population ranged from 5.40 to 20.70% ( 4 , 5 ). Previous studies have shown that mental health problems at work could reduce employees' work productivity and performance, could increase disability, could reduce quality of life, and may lead to premature early retirement, which results in direct social and economic costs ( 6 – 8 ).…”

A new ranking index to identify the work-related psychosocial factors most impacting mental health: a cross-sectional study

“…The present work was based on the analysis of a cross-sectional study conducted in March 2018 on a sample of 3200 workers, representative of the French working population, 12 the ‘Baromètre Travail et Santé Psychique’ survey. Representativeness was achieved by using both quota sampling for sex, age, occupation and residence locality, 12 and the rim weighting method (raking). 13 Workers were recruited in the ‘Ipsos Access Panel’ and were invited by email to participate in the study.…”

“…A 44-item questionnaire 12 was used to measure work-related WPSFs based on an integrative view of several conceptual models on WPSFs and their effects (Karasek, 3 Siegrist, 4 Greenberg 5 and Harvey et al 15 ). All these models describe the individual perception of the work environment.…”

“…The usefulness of this approach is illustrated using recent data from a cross-sectional study conducted in 2018. 12 In this article, we first briefly describe the study data. Second, we describe the developed WPSF RI using an adapted Cooper-like index that includes multivariate assessment of the WPSF’s importance instead of the univariate ‘consequence’ originally used by Cooper.…”