Job stress as a preventable upstream determinant of common mental disorders: a review for practitioners and policy-makers

There is growing recognition of the important role of mental health in the workforce and in the workplace. At the same time, there has been a rapid growth of studies linking job stress and other psychosocial working conditions to common mental disorders, and a corresponding increase in public concern media attention to job stress and its impact upon worker health and well-being. This article provides a summary of the relevant scientific and medical literature on this topic for practitioners and policy-makers. It presents a primer on job stress concepts, an overview of the evidence linking job stress and common mental disorders, a summary of the intervention research on ways to prevent and control job stress, and a discussion of the strengths and weakness of the evidence base. We conclude that there is strong evidence linking job stress and common mental disorders, and that it is a substantial problem on the population level. On a positive note, however, the job stress intervention evidence also shows that the problem is preventable and can be effectively addressed by a combination of work- and worker-directed intervention.