每天工作超11小时更易患抑郁症

Working overtime could boost risk for major depressive episode

[ 2012-02-09 ]

 

英国和芬兰的研究人员通过对2000多名英国公务员工作状态的调查发现，长时间工作的人更易患抑郁症，每天工作11个小时以上或每周工作55个小时以上的人则面临更大的风险；此外，最容易患抑郁症的人群是女性、年轻人和薪酬等级较低且有饮酒习惯的人。调查问卷显示，每天工作11个小时或更长时间的人患抑郁症的概率比每天工作7-8个小时的职员高2.5倍。研究还发现，大部分长时间工作的人是拿着高薪、从事颇具挑战性工作的男性，但他们患抑郁症的比例却相对较低。对此，研究人员认为，一种情况是，较高的收入能够“缓和”心中的抑郁情绪，使他们沉醉在工作之中；另一种可能则是他们拥有更高水平的“社会支援”，比如来自下属的支持。

 

If you regularly work overtime, you could be doubling your risk of depression, according to a new British study

 

Regularly working long hours in the office might increase your risk of a serious depressive episode, according to a new study.

 

According to findings published in the journal PloS ONE on Wednesday, people who regularly work 11 hours or more each day are more than twice as likely to experience a major episode of depression than colleagues who stick with an eight-hour work day.

 

Researchers from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and Queen Mary University of London examined records of more than 2,000 London-based white-collar workers in a five-year study. None of the recruits had a recent history of depression when they were enrolled in the study.

 

Those who worked 11 hours or more each day were between 2.3 and 2.5 times more likely to develop a major depressive episode than those who worked seven-to-eight-hour days. Researchers controlled for other factors, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, and general health.

 

"Long working hours don't just affect us because of the pressure and intensity of work itself, they affect us because we don't have enough time for all the other things we need for good mental health, such as good quality sleep, relationships, and opportunities for rest and exercise," Paul Farmer, chief executive of leading British mental health charity Mind, told WebMD. "Every time we squeeze more work in, many of us will be squeezing something else out.

 

While other studies have been done on work hours and depression, "results have not been conclusive because there is no standardized benchmark for what constitutes a 'normal' working day," reports WebMD.

 

A previous study by the same researchers, which also relied on the same database of London-based workers, found that overtime was linked with a 60 percent increase in coronary heart disease.