Psychosocial working conditions, workplace harassment and mental health

Introduction: Work is an important factor for our quality of life. Unfortunately, many employees experience bullying, violence and threats while they are working, and this is a growing concern worldwide. Risk factors have been widely discussed and studied over the last decades, however, today little is known about the role of specific psychosocial work environment factors as antecedents of work-related bullying and violence. Research has shown that exposure to workplace bullying increases the risk of depression but the knowledge about mental health consequences associated with exposure to threats and violence at work is deficient.
Aims: We aimed to analyse whether workplace measures of quantitative demands, decision latitude and organizational justice at work predict later exposure to workplace bullying and violence and threats. Furthermore, we aimed to study the association between exposure to work-related violence and threats and the risk of mental health problems, especially clinically diagnosed depression and the prescription of antidepressant medication.
Conclusion: Our results suggest an association between low levels of relational justice in the work environment and workplace bullying. Considering risk of work-related threats and violence among nurses we found weak evidence that high demands increased the risk. We found no evidence that quantitative demands were related to work-related bullying or that relational justice was related to work-related threats and violence among nurses. Decision latitude and procedural justice was not related to either workplace bullying or work-related threats and violence. Furthermore, we found an increased risk of getting prescriptions of antidepressants after exposure to threats and violence, and an increased risk of depression diagnosed by a standardized psychiatric interview after exposure to threats, however the risk was not statistically significant when we excluded employees with previous history of depression. These results emphasizes the importance of increasing our knowledge about risk factors in the psychosocial work environment in order to create and develop healthy workplaces. In addition, the need to refine and validate tools for measuring bullying, threats and violence is highlighted in this thesis.