Adverse conditions at the workplace are associated with increased suicide risk
Section snippets
Study design
The data of the present study was drawn from three population-based MONICA/KORA Augsburg surveys (S1, S2, S3) conducted between 1984 and 1995 in the region of Augsburg, southern Germany, and followed-up within the KORA research platform (Holle et al., 2005). The MONICA Augsburg project was part of the multinational WHO MONICA project aimed to estimate the prevalence and distribution of cardiovascular risk factors among men and women aged 25–64 (S1) or 25–74 years (S2, S3) (WHO MONICA Project
Descriptive analyses
The associations of suicide-related risk factors with adverse chronobiological/physical and psychosocial working conditions as well as with job strain are shown in Table 1. Participants with high adverse working conditions, both chronobiological/physical and psychosocial, were significantly younger and more often male than participants in the low or intermediate group; the opposite was observed for job strain with a higher mean age and a lower percentage of men in the high compared to the
Overall
Being employed is an important resource and could improve mental well-being (Woo and Postolache, 2008). However, on the other hand, being employed can also be a source of dissatisfaction and sustained stress. A number of studies have shown associations of elevated work-related psychosocial stress with increased risk for cardiovascular diseases (Kivimaki et al., 2012, Emeny et al., 2013). In the worst case, it can act as a life-threatening source of stress and lead to suicide mortality (Woo and
Conclusions
A negative working environment concerning chronobiological or physical conditions at the workplace had an unfavourable impact on suicide mortality risk, even after controlling for relevant suicide-related risk factors. These findings should be considered in measurements aimed to prevent suicidal events in the working population.
Employed subjects often spend more time at work than at home during the daytime which reinforces the need to tackle health problems at the workplace, regardless of
Role of the funding sources
The KORA research platform is financed by the Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health (GmbH), which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and by the State of Bavaria. Barbara Schneider is investigator of a clinical trial of Norgine-ETOH, a multi-centre open short term follow-up Phase II study to evaluate the clearance of ETOH, funded by Pierrel Research GmbH.
Contributors
JB had the idea of the study, performed the statistical analyses and took the lead in writing the manuscript. BS, KL and RTE made substantial contribution to the interpretation of the analyses and revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. CM made substantial contributions to the acquisition of data and revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. NE revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. ND made substantial
Conflict of interest
All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgement
We thank all members of the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the KORA study center who were involved in the planning and conduct of the MONICA/KORA Augsburg studies. Finally, we are indebted to all study participants.
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