Working long hours more than doubles depression risk

26th January 2012 - 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 put in a standard eight hour day, a new study has found.

The risk remained largely unchanged even after factors like smoking, alcohol consumption and general health were taken into account.

Depression is a common illness, with one in five people in the UK experiencing it at some point in their life.

There have been a number of previous studies on the subject, but results have not been conclusive because there is no standardised benchmark for what constitutes a 'normal' working day.

Office workers

Researchers from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and Queen Mary University of London examined records of 2,123 British civil servants to reach their findings. None of the middle aged recruits had a recent history of depression when they were enrolled. The London-based office workers, who were mainly men, were followed up after six years.

The researchers found that 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. They say the figures remained broadly unchanged even after the results were adjusted for factors like background, health and lifestyle.

Alcohol

Employees with long working hours were more likely to be men, married or cohabiting, and with higher graded jobs than colleagues who worked shorter days. They also tended to drink alcohol above recommended limits.

Lead author Marianna Virtanen of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health says that the study has some important lessons for bosses. "If there is a risk that you lose employees due to depression associated with long working hours, it could be useful to think about ways to organise work in such a way that nobody is constantly exposed to excessive workload," she tells us.

A previous study by the same author, which used the same database of civil servants, found that overtime was associated with a 60% increase in coronary heart disease.

Issue for employers

Commenting by email on the latest research, which appears in the journal PLoS ONE, Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind says: "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. Every time we squeeze more work in, many of us will be squeezing something else out.

"Making employees work excessive hours is a false economy, as not only are tired, unhappy workers less productive than happy employees, but they risk developing mental health issues that if handled badly, can be costly to businesses in the long run. Research by Mind found that one in five employees have developed depression they thought was directly caused by problems at work, so working conditions are an issue that employers can't afford to ignore.

"When people get work-related depression, employers need to move away from seeing this as a sign of personal weakness, and realise it might also be a sign that there is something wrong with the workplace."