MALE DEPRESSED WORKERS TAKE LONGER TO RETURN TO WORK THAN FEMALE

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Who has never felt sadness, lack of desire to go to work, loss of pleasure in daily activities, slowness in thinking and willingness to just die? These are some of the signs of depression, an increasingly common disorder with adverse occupational effects. Most professionals do not associate depression with the cognitive symptoms displayed by those who have the disorder. These signs impact directly on the work routine, such as difficulty concentrating, indecisiveness and forgetfulness.
In 2012, the European Depression Association (EDA) launched the IDEA (Impact of Depression in the Workplace in Europe Audit) survey to reveal the impact of depression in the workplace, its subsequent personal and economic burden and how this varies across Europe. Main data showed that individuals with depression report more decline in productivity than those without depression, projecting productivity loss at £ 77 billion per year in the UK. As such, comprehensive data on depression-related work performance and lost productivity are major gaps in health knowledge, where information on expenditure, impairment, morbidity, and accident injury is combined.
Traditional job-related epidemiology has placed less emphasis on women’s difficulties in the workplace than men’s. Most investigations on gender equality in the economic market have suggested female workers as a key susceptible group in terms of prevalence and unfavorable outcome. Major interest had focused on gender-related physiological response at work and reproductive function affecting work performance, as well as discrimination against women in the workplace, such as sexual harassment, inequality in earning and labor rights. The rising number of women as chief family provider indicates the growing participation of female workers in a country’s economy. The reasons may be attributed to a change in values regarding the role of women in modern society and to factors such as massive entry into the labor market and the increasing level of education at the college level, combined with reduced fertility.

Data from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, has examined this trend. Researchers from the Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Y. P. Wang and C. Gorenstein, evaluated how workers perceive depression in the workplace, as well as examining depression-related disabilities by gender.

Brazilian workers (n = 1000) answered an online questionnaire about depressive symptoms and related consequences in the workplace. Almost one in five (18.9%) participants reported to have sometimes been “labeled” by a health professional as suffering from depression. Female workers reported two times more depression than men, with the male/female gender ratio of 1:2. Common symptoms attributable to depression were crying, loss of interest, and sadness.

In current times of economic crisis, the majority of chronically depressed workers (73.5%) continued to work. Performance-related impairments were reported by around 60% of depressed workers who continued working. Over half of them also complained about cognitive symptoms (concentration difficulties, indecisiveness, forgetfulness), with men reporting more cognitive dysfunctions than women. One in three workers had taken time off work due to depression (mean 65.7 out-of-role days), with these periods being lengthier for men than for women.
The findings of the current investigation in the Brazilian workforce are an invaluable source in comparing with other Latin American and developing countries at a similar economic stage. Besides considering how depressive symptoms may affect a company’s productivity, the inclusion of the sex variable in the dataset of occupational health is important to appreciate the growing participation of women in the market economy, allowing a reduction in its impact on the individual, society, and companies as a whole. Paradoxically, although women were viewed as a vulnerable group in the workplace, depressed male workers emerged as a group with more unmet needs that required extensive attention. General and gender-related strategies to handle depression in the workplace are recommended.

Although the current study underscores the higher likelihood of women suffering from depression than men, men take longer time than women to return to work in the case of sick leave. The disability and the burden of depression should be seriously handled in the organizations, as around one in five Brazilian workers has been labeled as suffering from depression in their active professional period. However, the stigma of mental disorders seems to haunt the workplace of many depressed individuals. Both workers and managers appeared to neglect the impact of common cognitive impairments when depressed workers remained in their activities, regardless of frequent reports of deficient work productivity, with deterioration of environment climate and further negative consequences on a company’s efficiency.
In summary, comprehensive research concerning the occurrence and consequences of depression in the workplace is still scarce in emerging middle-income countries. Depression must be considered an interactive relationship between individuals with their personal and environmental needs in workplace setting. The identification of this devastating and onerous condition in organizations may be greatly improved by including those covert and cognitive symptoms of depression affecting the workers. Proper tools for coping with and treating depression should be offered to the workers: well-being and awareness promotion, educational programs, suitable resource provision, explicit protective labor policies can help those workers to seek care, diminishing the fear of being dismissed in times of economic crisis. Finally, so as to return those with depression to the workplace, the current study calls for greater integration between corporate stakeholders and academic investigations on mental health of employees.