Original ResearchPsychosocial job stressors and thoughts about suicide among males: a cross-sectional study from the first wave of the Ten to Men cohort
Introduction
In most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, the rate of suicide among males is three to four times higher than that of women.1 While there are numerous complex reasons for the greater susceptibility of males to suicide compared to females, evidence suggests risk factors such as their greater likelihood of using more lethal means, and lower likelihood of seeking help for mental health problems as being two important influences.2
In addition to their overall higher rates of suicide, research suggests that males who die by suicide are more sensitive to external economic stressors than their female counterparts. For example, a large body of ecological research shows that the male rate of suicide in a nation correlates with the unemployment rate.3, 4 The relevance of employment as a potential stressor is also demonstrated in research showing that male suicide rates are higher among those in lower skilled occupations compared to those in higher skilled occupations.5
As it stands, there is limited gender specific research on whether males who experience psychosocial job stressors also report a higher frequency of suicidal thoughts, which is often considered an important risk factor for future suicidal behaviours and death, as well as being associated with mental disorders (e.g., depression and anxiety disorders).6 In the current study, we sought to extend investigation of this issue using baseline data from a large cohort of 11,600 Australian males to answer the research question: is exposure to psychosocial job stressors associated with higher odds of suicidal ideation among males? This is an important research topic considering the large number of working age males who lose their lives to suicide.1
Section snippets
Data source
We used data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Male Health (Ten to Men). Ten to Men is a national longitudinal study of boys and men aged 10–55 years at baseline. The study aims to collect data on a range of life domains, including demographic and socio-economic characteristics, physical, mental health and well-being, health behaviours, and use and knowledge of health services. Sampling, recruitment and data collection methods are described elsewhere.7 For this analysis males 18 years
Results
As can be seen in Table 1, those who recently had thoughts about suicide were more likely to report greater unfairness of pay, low job control, high job demands and job insecurity.
Table 2 displays the univariable and multivariable associations (where all variables are simultaneously adjusted for each another). In multivariable analysis, persons who were exposed to low job control (odds ratio [OR] 1.15, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.05–1.26, P = 0.003), job insecurity (OR 1.69, 95% CI
Discussion
The observed associations between exposure to three of the four job stressors measured and suicidal ideation are consistent with the growing evidence linking job stressors with suicidal ideation.10, 11 These study findings should also be viewed in the context of studies on death by suicide among males, which have also identified job stressors as key risk factor for suicide.12, 13, 14
There may be a number of explanations for the relationship between poor working conditions and suicidal ideation.
Acknowledgements
The research on which this paper is based on was conducted as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Male Health by the University of Melbourne. We are grateful to the Australian Government Department of Health for funding and to the boys and men who provided survey data. We would also like to thank Suzanne Mavoa for her statistical guidance and support.
Authors' contributions
AM conceived the article, conducted analysis and wrote drafts of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the analytic approach and
References (20)
- et al.
Suicide in young men
Lancet
(2012) - et al.
Chapter 3: health status, suicide
- et al.
Long-term unemployment and suicide: a systematic review and meta-analysis
PLoS One
(2013) - et al.
Systematic review of suicide in economic recession
World J Psychiatry
(2015) - et al.
Occupational class differences in suicide: evidence of changes over time and during the global financial crisis in Australia
BMC Psychiatry
(2015) - et al.
Trends in suicide ideation, plans, gestures, and attempts in the United States, 1990–1992 to 2001–2003
JAMA
(2005) - et al.
Cohort profile: Ten to Men (The Australian Longitudinal Study on Male Health)
Int J Epidemiol
(2016) - et al.
The PHQ-9: validity of a brief depression severity measure
J Gen Intern Med
(2001) Technical paper: socio-economic indexes for areas (SEIFA) 2011
- et al.
Associations between lifestyle factors, working environment, depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation: a large-scale study in Japan
Ind Health
(2009)
Cited by (22)
Associations between cognitive and affective job insecurity and incident purchase of psychotropic drugs: A prospective cohort study of Swedish employees
2020, Journal of Affective DisordersCitation Excerpt :An increased use of atypical employment forms is likely to increase feelings of uncertainty about future job situations among employees (Berglund, 2014). Job insecurity in terms of worrying about ones future employment, has been associated with e.g. poor health and low wellbeing (De Witte et al., 2016), suicidal ideation (Milner et al., 2017), burnout symptoms (Aronsson et al., 2017) and depressive symptoms (Kim and von dem Knesebeck, 2016; Theorell et al., 2015). However, evidence on the impact of job insecurity on mental health and sleep problems has repeatedly been reported as limited or insufficient (Aronsson et al., 2017; Bonde, 2008; Harvey et al., 2017; Linton et al., 2015; Netterstrom et al., 2008; Nieuwenhuijsen et al., 2010; Theorell et al., 2015).
Impact of effort reward imbalance at work on suicidal ideation in ten European countries: The role of depressive symptoms
2020, Journal of Affective DisordersCitation Excerpt :Both models were shown to predict elevated risks of coronary heart disease (Dragano et al., 2017), diabetes (Nyberg et al., 2014; Kumari et al., 2004), and hypertension (Babu et al., 2014; Gilbert-Ouimet et al., 2014), and depression (Madsen et al., 2017; Rugulies et al., 2017). Suicidal ideation has only rarely been studied in relation to work stress, and if so, most often in cross-sectional studies (Byun et al., 2016; Loerbroks et al., 2016; Milner et al., 2017; Li et al., 2017). Further, effort-reward imbalance model focuses on core frustrated social rewards in occupational life with substantial impact on despair and reduced self-esteem, which may play a particularly important role in the occurrence of suicidal ideation.
Work intensity in men and work-related emotional demands in women are associated with increased suicidality among persons attending primary care
2018, Journal of Affective DisordersCitation Excerpt :For instance two large-scale studies conducted among Japanese employees (respectively 2834 men and 1284 women and 3631 men and 2247 women) found a relationship between suicidal ideation and job stressors (working long hours) in men—but not in women—(Takada et al., 2009). Recently another Australian study on men's health (11,052 working males) reported elevated odds of suicidal ideation in persons exposed to low job control, job insecurity, unfair pay and job insecurity (Milner et al., 2017a). Further studies are necessary to identify sex-specific differences in a broad range of work-related factors associated with suicide behaviors.
ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE AND MENTAL HEALTH
2023, The Routledge Companion to Mental Health at WorkPsychosocial work environment as a dynamic network: a multi-wave cohort study
2022, Scientific ReportsLinking music streaming platform advertisements with a digital mental health assessment and interventions
2022, Frontiers in Digital Health