Association of occupational stress with depressive symptoms of workers in a power grid enterprise

  Objective  To explore the influencing factors of workers' depressive symptoms in a power grid enterprise and the relationship between occupational stress and depressive symptoms.

  Methods  Totally 1 091 employees in a power grid enterprise were studied. The JCQ and ERIQ were used to survey the occupational stress and CES-D was used to investigate depressive symptoms. Multivariate logistic regression was used to analyze the influencing factors of depressive symptoms.

  Results  The main occupational hazards exposed to workers were noise and electromagnetic radiation. Totally 974 workers (89.3%) finished this survey effectively and the morbidity of depressive symptoms was 36.7% among these population. The multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that in JDC model the risk of depressive symptoms among workers with sleep time of 6 to 7 hours or longer than 7 hours was 0.658 (95%CI: 0.481-0.901) and 0.362(95%CI: 0.239-0.550) respectively compared with workers with sleep time less than 6 hours. The workers exposed to visual display terminal had higher risk of depressive symptoms (OR=1.493, 95%CI: 1.118 -1.995) compared with other workers. The medium and high social support were protective factors and the risk of depressive symptoms was 0.594(95%CI: 0.430-0.821) and 0.539(95%CI, 0.342-0.850) respectively compared with workers with low social support. The workers with high JDC occupational stress had higher risk of depressive symptoms (OR=1.667, 95%CI: 1.239-2.242) compared with the workers with low JDC occupational stress. In the ERI model, the risk of depressive symptoms among workers with sleep time of 6 to 7 hours or longer than 7 hours was 0.674(95%CI: 0.490-0.927) and 0.394(95%CI: 0.258-0.601) respectively compared with workers with sleep time less than 6 hours. The workers exposed to visual display terminal had higher risk of depressive symptoms (OR=1.475, 95%CI: 1.100-1.978) compared with other workers. The workers with high overcommitment or high ERI had higher risk of depressive symptoms (OR=1.813 or 2.554, 95% CI: 1.234-2.664 or 1.866-3.495) respectively compared with workers with low overcommitment or low ERI.

  Conclusions  Employees in this power grid enterprise had relatively high morbidity of depressive symptoms. The Enterprise should build a good working environment, strength the social support for employees to reduce occupational stress. The employees should also arrange their work and rest time reasonably, enhance self-regulation ability, and relieve their own work pressure to prevent the occurrence of mental illnesses such as depressive symptoms.