Objectives The objectives were to explore the associations between various types of occupational exposures and depression in the French national working population, most of the studies in the literature focussing on a limited number of exposures and on symptom scales. Methods The study was based on a nationally representative sample of 25,977 employees, 14,682 men and 11,295 women. Depression was measured using the PHQ-9 instrument and algorithm. Occupational exposures included factors related to both the psychosocial and physical work environment. Weighted logistic regression analyses were performed to study the associations between exposures and outcome with adjustment for covariates among men and women separately. Results The prevalence of depression was higher for women than for men (5.70% versus 3.78%). The final models showed that low decision latitude, low reward, bullying, workfamily and ethical conflicts for both genders, and high psychological demands, low social support, and long working hours among women were risk factors for depression. No occupational exposure of physical, biomechanical, chemical and biological nature was associated with depression. Sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of the results. Conclusions Significant associations were found between psychosocial work exposures and depression, and there were some differences in these associations between genders. This study is one of the first to provide a comprehensive overview of occupational exposures in association with depression. More prevention towards the psychosocial work environment is needed to improve mental health of working populations.

Patterns of bodily movement can be used to signal a wide variety of information, including emotional states. Are these signals reliant on culturally learned cues or are they intelligible across individuals lacking exposure to a common culture? To find out, we traveled to a remote Kreung village in Ratanakiri, Cambodia. First, we recorded Kreung portrayals of 5 emotions through bodily movement. These videos were later shown to American participants, who matched the videos with appropriate emotional labels with above chance accuracy (Study 1). The Kreung also viewed Western point-light displays of emotions. After each display, they were asked to either freely describe what was being expressed (Study 2) or choose from 5 predetermined response options (Study 3). Across these studies, Kreung participants recognized Western point-light displays of anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and pride with above chance accuracy. Kreung raters were not above chance in deciphering an American point-light display depicting love, suggesting that recognizing love may rely, at least in part, on culturally specific cues or modalities other than bodily movement. In addition, multidimensional scaling of the patterns of nonverbal behavior associated with each emotion in each culture suggested that similar patterns of nonverbal behavior are used to convey the same emotions across cultures. The considerable cross-cultural intelligibility observed across these studies suggests that the communication of emotion through movement is largely shaped by aspects of physiology and the environment shared by all humans, irrespective of differences in cultural context. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Preventive measures at the workplace oriented towards low-skilled occupational groups and both psychosocial work factors and other occupational exposures may be beneficial to reduce sickness absence spells and occupational differences in this outcome.