Predicting Factors of Depression and Anxiety in Mental Health Nurses: A Quantitative Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: The nursing profession is characterized as one of the most stressful and emotional dementing professions. It is widely agreed that many nurses are experiencing anxiety and depression as a results of their profession. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence and associated factors of depression and anxiety among mental health nurses working in public psychiatric hospitals, in order to identify independent predictors of mental health disorders risk. Material and Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted in which 110 mental health nurses who were working in public psychiatric hospitals of Greece participated. The Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-2 (GAD-2) questionnaire along with a sheet with basics demographic, social, and work characteristics, including gender, age, marital status, educational level, working experience in nursing, working position and shift, were used as instrument for data collection. Results:The mean age of the nurses was 42.64 years (SD = 5.87 years) and working experience in nursing 15.73 years (SD = 5.64 years). Most participants were women 64.5%, married 59.1% and nursing assistant 53.6%, while 48.2% of them held a higher education degree.A very large percentage found to be classified as depressed (52.7%) and anxious (48.2%) and factors that found to be associated were age, marital status and educational level (for depression and anxiety) and working experience (only for depression). Conclusions: Mental health nurses are in high risk for developing psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. Being single, divorced or widowed, older, with many years of experience and a higher education degree can be predicting factors associated with depression and anxiety in mental health nurses.

Occupational Burnout and Its Related Factors Among Iranian Nurses: A Cross-Sectional Study in Shahroud, Northeast of Iran

“…Employees’ physical and mental health is one of the major characteristics of a healthy organisation. In a healthy society, the responsibility of manufacturing organizations is not limited to producing as much as profitable goods and services, and the managers of the organizations of such communities know that more production is the result and outcome of effective management; this important issue is not obtained without the attention and believing in the employees’ mental health [1], [2], [3]. So, one of the duties of every competent, forward-looking and resourceful manager is to provide the mental health of the employees in the organisation.…”

Predictors of anxiety and depressive symptoms among Greek nurses

“…Specifically, the lower level of education (lyceum) or the higher level (postgraduate degree) was significant predictors of anxiety and depression compared to the university degree. In a similar survey (22) in Greece, results were found, as far as the University Degree is concerned, and it may be explained by the sense of responsibility of a postgraduate holder. Regarding lyceum graduates, this finding can be attributed to the lack of professional development goals.…”

“…For males employed in the human service sector, the risk of stress and depression is relatively higher compared to females (30). Female nurses from various sectors experience more anxiety than men (31) while other researchers (22) did not find any association.…”

“…Moreover, in examining predictors of depression, hierarchical multiple linear regression evaluated how well can trait anxiety predicts depression after controlling for demographics and occupational predictors. The statistics of the data were processed with SPSS v. 22.0 for Windows. The level of statistical significance was set up at 0.05.…”

“…Also, considering that trait anxiety, as a measure of negative affectivity, may predict depression (21), it was hypothesized that trait anxiety would be a significant predictor of depression. This study is one of the few studies (20,22) exploring anxiety and depression among Greek nurses.…”