More than a few
Americans have complained, at one time or another, that workplace
stress was driving them crazy. However, when researchers from the
Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health recently set out to
investigate the effects of employment stress on mental health, they
stumbled across a very different kind of threat to mental
well-being, a threat linked to a single lifestyle often depicted as
carefree and glamorous.
In psychosocial
data collected from 905 men and women employed full-time between
1993 and 1996, the Johns Hopkins team saw what they expected-a
strong linkage between "high job strain" and depression. They also
uncovered something they had not expected: namely, clear evidence
that single living strongly predicts mental distress.
Indeed, the authors
of the new study found that among the employed men in their study,
marital status was "the most important factor" for predicting all
three forms of depression analyzed. The likelihood of a "major
depressive episode" ran an astounding nine times higher (Odds Ratio
of 8.98) among the unmarried men than among the married men in the
study.
Among women, "not
being married also increased the odds ratio for the association with
depression," although less dramatically than among men. Still, when
looking at "dysphoria" (one of the forms of depression of interest
to the researchers), the Johns Hopkins scholars discovered that
among the women in the study "not being married had a higher odds
ratio than high psychologic job strain" (3.11 vs. 2.88).
For the whole study
sample (men and women), "marital status and age had a stronger
association with depressive syndrome than did high physical job
strain."
Obviously, merely
improving the workplace environment will not eliminate psychological
problems among men and women facing life at home without a spouse.
