Is the effect of work-related psychosocial exposure on depressive and anxiety disorders short-term, lagged or cumulative?

Purpose: To determine the short-term, lagged, and cumulative effects of psychosocial factors (PSF) on the incidence of depression and anxiety.

Method: Major depressive disorders (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorders (GAD) were diagnosed in 2006 and 2010 using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview among 5684 workers from the French SIP cohort. The outcome considered here was diagnosis of MDD and/or GAD (MDD/GAD) in 2010. The frequency of 17 PSF, covering labour intensity and working time, emotional demand, autonomy, social relationships, conflict of values, and job insecurity, was self-reported in 2006 and 2010. For each PSF, four groups (A-D) were considered: exposed neither in 2006 nor in 2010 (A as the reference), exposed in 2010 but not in 2006 (B as a short-term association), exposed in 2006 but not in 2010 (C as a lagged association), exposed in both 2006 and 2010 (D as a cumulative association).

Results: In men, short-term and cumulative-and to a lesser extent lagged-associations of four labour-intensity factors with MDD/GAD occurrence were observed (high volume of work, pressure at work, high complexity, and long working hours). In women, the short-term and cumulative associations of five PSF were observed, mostly emotional demand factors, lack of reward and work-family imbalance. Job insecurity had strong, short-term, cumulative and lagged associations in both men and women.

Conclusion: According to PSF and gender, the results suggest that the relationships between PSF exposure and MDD/GAD were mostly short-term and cumulative rather than lagged.