Association between the perception of adverse working conditions and depressive symptomatology: A systematic review

Background The scientific literature shows that there is a relation between the perception of adverse psychosocial risk factors and depression, despite the few longitudinal studies on this topic. Objective The aim of the study was to carry out a systematic review of longitudinal studies in which the perception of adverse psychosocial working conditions was associated with depression in the organizational context. Method Articles published between 2011 and 2015 were reviewed using PsycINFO, Web of Knowledge and PubMed databases. Results Out of 588 studies, only four scientific articles were obtained. Results indicate that high perception of job demands, scarce control over demands, effort-reward imbalance, perceived work-family conflict, lack of supervision, job insecurity, working overtime, working on weekends when holding positions of low occupational grade and lower professional tenure are associated with depressive symptoms. Conclusions These factors need to be taken into account in order to improve occupational health.