Middle managers at higher anxiety, depression risk

Mid-level managers may suffer higher rates of depression and anxiety than those at the top or bottom of the social hierarchy, a new study has found.
Nearly twice the number of supervisors and managers reported they suffered from anxiety compared to workers, researchers found.
Symptoms of depression were reported by 18 per cent of supervisors and managers compared to 12 per cent for workers, according to researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
While social disadvantage related to income and educational attainment is associated with a higher risk of most adverse mental health outcomes, these latest findings show that people towards the middle of social hierarchies suffered higher rates of depression and anxiety based on their social class and position of power in the labour market.

"Contradictory class locations are those that embody aspects of both ownership and labour, and using this construct we found patterns of depression and anxiety that are not easily detected or explained with standard approaches," said first author Seth J Prins, a doctoral student in Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health.
"We explored how social class might influence depression and anxiety in ways that may be masked or incompletely explained by standard socioeconomic status measures," said Prins.

The researchers based their findings on the largest representative population data set ever used to test these hypotheses directly: the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), a nationally representative survey of the US population age 18 and older, interviewed in person.

The study used data on the 21,859 participants who were full-time workers.
The researchers estimated the prevalence and odds of any lifetime and previous 12-month depression and anxiety by occupational class categories, income, and education.
Class designations were made by sorting respondents into three categories: owners, who identified as self-employed and earned greater than USD 71,500; managers and supervisors, who occupied executive, administrative or managerial positions; and workers, who were defined by various occupation categories in the NESARC including farmers and labourers.
"We chose to focus on depression and anxiety because the average age of onset is older than age 18, and these disorders are likely to arise after entry in the workforce," said Katherine Keyes, assistant professor of Epidemiology.

Prior research has shown that work stress and job strain are important risk factors in developing depression. Workers with little opportunity for decision-making and greater job demands show higher rates of depressive symptoms.