Work-related musculoskeletal pain and its association with common mental disorders among employees of a poultry producing company in Southern Brazil.

Background: Musculoskeletal pain is one of the most common occupational problems in the industrial society and its prevalence is potentially associated with mental disorders.

Objective: To estimate the prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal pain and its association with occurrence of common mental disorders among employees of a poultry processing company in Southern Brazil.

Methods: Cross-sectional study conducted in 2010 with 1,103 employees aged 18 to 52 years old. Musculoskeletal pain was investigated based on a human figure adapted from the Standardized Nordic Questionnaire. We considered reported work-related pain in any part of the body in the past 12 months. Occurrence of common mental disorders was assessed- by the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20). Crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) and corresponding 95% confidence interval (95%CI) were obtained by Poisson regression with robust variance.

Results: The prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal pain was 40.3% (95%CI 37.4-43.2) for the total sample, 46.8% (95%CI 43.2-50.5) for women and 27.8% (95%CI 23.2-32.3) for men. The prevalence of musculoskeletal pain was twice higher for the participants with common mental disorders compared to those without this condition (PR=2.27; 95%CI 1.99-2.58). This effect remained significant after adjustment for sociodemographic, behavioral, health-related and occupational variables.

Conclusion: The results of the present study point to the relevance of preventive measures to promote the mental and physical health of workers in order to reduce or minimize the occurrence of pain.