Depression in the workplace is not going away. Almost 500,000 Canadians aged 25 to 64 who were employed at the time that the 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey(CCHS)data was collected had experienced a “major depressive episode” in the previous year. In addition, another one million workers(8% of the workforce)had experienced depression at some point in their lives, but not in that previous year.
Depression at work was more prevalent among women(5.1%)than men(2.6%). It was also more common among divorced, separated or widowed Canadians(7.5%)than those who were married or common law(3.0%).
The CCHS findings also indicated that depression is linked to various factors. One factor is job stress. Workers who reported high stress levels were more likely to have reported depression in the last year(6.0%)than those who reported minimal job stress(2.5%).
Depression also affects work absence. Absence was more common in those respondents who had experienced depression in the previous year than those who had no history of depression. Sixteen per cent of workers with depression said they were absent at least one day the previous week compared with 7% of workers who had never experienced depression.
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