Harmful effects of job stress and night work on psychological health

Shift working, including turning shift night work, and stable night work, leads psychological health problems. Beside to the shift work system, job stress and individual conditions factors also relate to the psychological health of employees, however, details of job stress and psychological health problems among stable night workers are still uncertain. The aim of this study is to analysis the amount of job stress and the psychological health problems among stable night workers, and also to analysis what factors should find out the psychological health situation of the stable night worker. The sample consisted of 87 civil workers, who completed the questionnaires, which included the NIOSH generic job stress questionnaire and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). A group with a GHQ score of 7 or more was determined as having psychological disorder(s). Multiple logistic regression was executed to estimation the odds ratios (ORs) for psychological disorder(s), including age, type of job, working year, marital status, and some subscales of the NIOSH questionnaire. Findings showed that the married workers were less likely to engage in psychological health problems than single group (OR=0.52, 95% CI=0.34–0.79). The psychological health of the employees with lower job control was better than the group with higher job control (OR=0.52, 95% CI=0.31–0.84). The group with a higher overloading job was more likely to have psychological health problems (OR=2.92, 95% CI=1.84–4.79). This study found out that a person with a high overloading, high job control, as well as single had greater ORs for psychological disorder among stable night workers.