Excessive Overtime Linked To Depression Says New Report

A new report by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, which is a follow up of the Whitehall II study of civil servants and work related health problems, shows a link between excessive overtime being worked and depression in such individuals.

The findings showed that those regularly working long hours compared with a routine of seven or eight hours can more than double their risk of depression.

Safety and Health Practitioner magazine reports on the findings:

‘Follow-up research to the Whitehall II study, which began in the 1980s, examined the link between overtime work and the onset of a major depressive episode (MDE) in a sample of British civil servants who had no previous psychological risk factors or MDEs.

Researchers found that those who worked 11 hours, or more a day were 2.3 to 2.5 times more likely to suffer an MDE. The association was the same even after a range of socio-demographic, life-style and work-related factors were taken into account.

The overall rate of depression at follow-up was 3.1 per cent – a lower figure than has been recorded by other studies of depression across general populations. The researchers suggest this might be because their study only considered participants who were free of psychological distress at the start of the five-year follow-up period.

The researchers point out that some positive work characteristics, such as high control or high rewards at work, may “buffer an employee against the adverse health effects of long working hours”. On the other hand, they suggest, “working long hours may also mean higher exposure to adverse working conditions”.

The authors concluded that large-scale population-based studies are needed to find out if the association between long hours and depression holds up in other contexts outside of the civil service. They also recommended further work to examine whether interventions designed to reduce working hours would alter depression risk in working populations.

The study, ‘Overtime work as a predictor of major depressive episode: A follow-up of the Whitehall II study’, was led by Marianna Virtanen of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.’

It can be found in the online journal PLoS ONE here

Source: SHP

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