Asia Pacific Environmental and Occupational Health Journal

Objective: Depression, an increasingly common disorder in the population, results in poor productivity among employees. As part of the World Health Organisation (WHO) theme “Depression- Let’s Talk’, in 2017, a narrative review of workplace depression was undertaken.

Methods: Key words were selected after discussion with experts and from major articles. An extensive search was conducted on the WHO website, Wiley, Google Scholar, PubMed, online journals using key terms like ‘depression in India’, ‘workplace depression’, ‘workplace stress’, ‘occupational stress’, ‘occupational health hazard’, ‘risk factors for employee depression’, ‘psychosocial factors for employee depression’, ‘assessment of workplace depression’, ‘measurement of workplace depression’, ‘tools for workplace depression’. Articles published from November 2017 till November 2019 were reviewed, and cross references were checked. Articles were reviewed and discussed among authors and relevant factors were identified.

Results: 101 out of 219 shortlisted articles were included based on relevance and focus on risk factors, consequences and assessment of workplace depression. Four basic risk factors were identified: ‘social climate’, ‘work characteristics’, ‘at risk population’ and ‘type of work’. Articles on suicide and interventions for workplace depression were excluded.

Conclusion: Type of work, work characteristics, and employee behaviour are risk factors for workplace depression. Women and employees with chronic physical illnesses are at greater risk for workplace depression. Depression in employees contributes to declined productivity and additional economic costs for organisations due to ‘absenteeism’ and ‘presenteeism’.