Affiliations: Department of Hygiene and Public Health, Nippon Medical School, Japan
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Dr. T. Kawada, Department of
Hygiene and Public Health, Nippon Medical School, 1-1-5 Sendagi, Bunkyo-Ku,
Tokyo 113-8602, Japan. Tel.: +81 3 3822 2131; Fax: +81 3 5685 3065; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Objective: Identifying the relationship between workload content and
health complaints would likely aid the establishment of preventative health
care strategies. Participants: The study population consisted of 137 male
workers from a pharmaceutical company. Methods: The workloads of the
target subjects were divided into three groups (A, B, and C+D) according to the
scores of a self-administered questionnaire. The results of General Health
Questionnaire (GHQ, 12 items version) for assessing health complaints were also
analyzed. Results: The percentages of workers who reported feelings of
stress in response to overtime work, irregular work, business trips, nighttime
work, no rest and/or no nap, mental workload, and physical workload were
22.6%, 15.3%, 2.9%, 8.0%, 13.9%, 58.3%, and 18.2%,
respectively. The significant odds ratio of workload predicting health
complaints was 6.9 for subjects in group B and 13.9 for subjects in group C+D.
Among them, the significant odds ratios of mental workload predicting health
complaints and a positive GHQ were 5.7 and 4.0, respectively. Having no regular
exercise also resulted in ORs of greater than 3 for health complaints and a
positive GHQ. Conclusions: To cope with the health complaints of workers,
mental health support by reducing individual workloads is recommended.
Keywords: Workload, health complaints, general health questionnaire, questionnaire survey, cross-sectional study
