Impact of work-related psychosocial factors on mental health: A cross-sectional study in the French working population

International audience ; BACKGROUND. According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety disorders, affect more than one in six people across the European Union in any given year. In the past few decades, mental health problems have increasingly contributed to sickness absence and long-term disability, and return to work is often complicated even if re-employment programs have a modest effect on the quality of life. Mental disorders lead to higher rates of absenteeism and constitute a leading cause of early retirement in Europe and have a direct impact on workplaces through reducing productivity, and increasing healthcare costs. A better understanding of work-related psychosocial factors (PSF) associated with employee’s mental health is important to help decision-makers and public authority to consider specific actions.AIMS. The aim of this study at first, is to determine the exposure of the French work population to work-related PSF and second, to measure the impact of PSF on mental health.DATA. The present work is based on a cross-sectional study conducted in march 2018 on a sample of 3200 workers, representative of the French working population. The sample has been randomly drawn from the French database “Ipsos Access Panel” and data were collected within a questionnaire administered during a computer assisted web interview (CAWI). To measure the level of mental health for each individual, the validated General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28 items), constructed by Goldberg is used. GHQ-28 items, which is surely the most internationally used, is a self-administered screening questionnaire designed to detect probable psychiatric disorder in primary care settings. The questionnaire doesn’t give any information on the basic health status of the subject. It allows to know if the interviewee is better or worse than usual at the time of the questionnaire. The French version of the questionnaire, used in our study, has been validated. In order to .