Abstract

CORDOBA CORONEL, John Jairo; FUENTES FUENTES, Alejandro  and  RUIZ RINCON, Carolina. Literature review: socio-demographic characteristics and impact of depression in the worker. Med. segur. trab. [online]. 2011, vol.57, n.223, pp.174-187. ISSN 1989-7790.

Introduction: Depression is an illness with undesirable effects in the work place. It has been associated with disability in terms of less productivity, absenteeism, labor rotation and anticipated retirement amongst others. Objectives: Identify the main sociodemographic characteristics in workers with depression. Identify the effects produced by depression in the workplace. Methodology: Bibliographic review in different databases in two phases: search/selection of articles and review of the 18 selected studies. Results: There is an increased risk of depression associated to women, low social support, workplace stress, job insecurity, job dissatisfaction, amongst others. Business women with low level of authority, employees of the industrial area or emotional high demand jobs, as well as men with high stress, high job insecurity and passive jobs are associated with the risk of depression. Depression causes absenteeism. It is estimated that poor performance at work causes the loss of 225 million work days and $36.6 billion dollars for productivity loss per year due to depression. Conclusions: There are gender differences in the association of depressive symptoms and psychosocial characteristics; these could be explained by the structure of occupations, the characteristics of work carried out by men and women or emerging causes not yet determined which deserve further research. The relationship between depression, associated factors and labor socioeconomic impacts, indicate the need for prevention and control policies at work.

Keywords : Absenteeism; Depression; Depressive disorder; Epidemiology; Prevalence; Worker; Workplace.

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