Professor Damien Ridge, Professor of Health Studies and Research Director for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was quoted in an article by New Scientist about the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s new research which claims there is little evidence linking depression and long working hours.
The article by New Scientist discusses how working for extended hours has long thought to increase the risk of depression, yet the largest review of research in this area by the WHO and International Labour Organisation suggests that there is a lack of evidence to support this claim.
However, the article also points out that identifying a link between the two is challenging when non-work factors also play a role, as well as the lines between people’s work and free time are increasingly being blurred.
Professor Ridge, alongside Alex Broom from the University of Sydney, said that looking at depression and the number of hours worked by an individual was a “potentially misleading” representation of the impact of work on mental health and depression. They said: “It is not necessarily that long work is not bad for us mentally, but that it is hard to know exactly in what ways it is bad for us.”
They added that asking people more specific questions, such as those relating to burnout or work satisfaction, may be a more relevant way to measure the impact of work on people’s mental health than depression.
Read the full article on the New Scientist website.
