Stressful jobs linked to depressed 15%

One in every six depressed Australians can blame their stressful job for their bad mental state, according to a study which calls for more stress support for employees, especially women.

But the controversial findings have not impressed mental health experts who claim that while work can indeed be stressful it is rarely a trigger for clinical depression.

The work by the University of Melbourne says about 15 per cent of working people with depression could attribute their illness to their employment.

"This translates to 21,437 working Victorians suffering from preventable depression caused by job stress," said Professor Tony LaMontagne, an occupational health specialist who led the study published in the international journal BMC Public Health.

"By comparison, 30-times fewer workers receive workers' compensation for stress-related mental disorders, suggesting that workers' compensation statistics grossly under-represent the true extent of the problem."

He said the jobs at fault were those where the employee had high demands but little control, with women and people in lower skilled most likely to be affected.

"This represents a substantial and inequitably distributed public health problem," Prof LaMontagne said.

"The burden of mental illness in the general population follows a similar demographic pattern, suggesting that job stress is a substantial contributor to mental health inequalities."

He said efforts were needed to improve job control, moderate demands, and provide more support from supervisors and co-workers.

"Our hope is that a better understanding of the scale of this problem will lead to more support for employees."

Todd Harper, chief executive of VicHealth which funded the study, said the results show that employers need to do more to prevent workplace-related mental health problems.

But depression experts argue that work is rarely a cause of clinical depression.

Professor Gordon Parker, executive director of Black Dog Institute, said depression would be over-diagnosed if it was confused with stress, sadness and other emotional responses.

"Work is usually only a cause of depression if the worker feels devalued, is humiliated or experiences some threat to their sense of self-esteem or self-worth," Prof Parker said.

"Thus, it is more an issue as to whether the environment at work is toxic for the individual rather than view work itself as a cause of 'depression'."

The study compared job stress data collected from 1,100 Victorian workers with depression rates collated from the National Mental Health survey.

Source: The Age