While the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the general public's health and well-being, it exacerbated the pre-existing well-being issues in the educational sector in many countries. Mindfulness-based ...interventions are often applied to protect and promote occupational well-being. To investigate how the well-being benefits of these interventions arise, we selected one accessible technique that is used in most of them: focused attention meditation. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, 199 teachers voluntarily practiced five to ten minutes of meditation together with their pupils, every morning for six months. We employed a three-wave longitudinal design to follow any changes in the meditating teachers' well-being and compared these changes to a waitlist control condition of 42 teachers. Three dimensions of well-being were measured at baseline, half-time, and post-intervention: emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being. Latent growth curve models revealed that the meditation technique not only improves well-being but also prevents the development of well-being problems. The practice of focused attention meditation resulted in improvements in emotional and physical well-being and prevented the development of cognitive well-being problems that were observed within the control condition. The effects were strongest for emotional and cognitive well-being and followed a linear trend. This paper shows that the well-being effects of mindfulness-based interventions are at least in part due to the focused attention meditation that is practiced in them. Occupational groups that experience emotional, cognitive, or physical well-being issues can benefit from a few minutes of focused attention meditation per day.
Trial registration: ISRCTN ISRCTN61170784 (https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN61170784).
Objectives. Depression is a leading cause of ill health and disability. As migrants form an increasing group in Europe, already making up about 8.7% of the population in 2010, knowledge on ...migrant-related inequalities in depression is of main public health interest. In this study, we first assess whether migrants in Europe are at higher risk for depression compared to the native population. Second, we assess whether the association between migration and depression is dependent on different forms of migrant integration. Migrant integration is looked at both from the individual and from the national level.
Design. Hierarchical linear regression analyses based on data for 20 countries in the European Social Survey 2006/2007 (N = 37,076 individuals aged 15 or more). Depression is measured using the center for Epidemiologic Depression Scale. We consider migrant integration over time (first- and second-generation migrants, differentiated according to European Union (EU) or non-EU origin), barriers to integration (low educational level, financial difficulties, being out of the labor market, ethnic minority status, discrimination), and the host country environment (national migrant integration policy). Controls are gender, age, partner relationship, social support, and welfare state regime.
Results. Natives and second-generation migrants do not differ significantly in their risk profile for depression. First-generation migrants show higher levels of depression, with those born outside of Europe to be the worst off. This higher risk for depression is not attributable to ethnic minority status but is mainly due to experienced barriers to socioeconomic integration and processes of discrimination. A country's national policy on migrant integration shows not to soften the depressing effect of being a first-generation migrant nor does it have indirect beneficial health effects by reducing barriers to integration.
Conclusion. In Europe, first-generation EU and non-EU migrants experience higher levels of depression. Second-generation migrants and natives show similar risk profiles.
Precarious employment is becoming an increasingly important social determinant of health inequalities among workers. The way in which contemporary employment arrangements and their health ...consequences are addressed in empirical research is mostly based on the contract-related or employment instability dimension. A broader conceptual approach including various important characteristics of the degrading of employment conditions and relations is needed.
The general objective of this paper is to empirically test a new multidimensional construct for measuring precarious employment in an existing database. Special focus is on the social distribution of precarious employment.
A subsample of 21,415 participants in the EU-27 from the Fourth European Working Conditions Survey-2005 was analysed. A cross-sectional study of the social distribution of precarious employment was conducted through the analysis of proportional differences according to gender, social class and credentials for the European Union as a whole and within each country. The 8 dimensions of the employment precariousness construct were represented by 11 indicators.
In general, women, workers without supervisory authority, those with fewer credentials, and those living in Eastern and Southern European countries suffer the highest levels of precarious employment. Exceptionally, men, workers with supervisory authority and those with the highest credentials suffer the highest levels of long working hours, schedule unpredictability and uncompensated flexible working times.
This article offers the first validation for an innovative multidimensional conceptualisation of employment precariousness applied to the analysis of existing survey data, showing the unequal distribution of precarious employment across the European labour force. This set of indicators can be useful for monitoring precarious employment.
•One in two PhD students experiences psychological distress; one in three is at risk of a common psychiatric disorder.•The prevalence of mental health problems is higher in PhD students than in the ...highly educated general population, highly educated employees and higher education students.•Work and organizational context are significant predictors of PhD students’ mental health.
Research policy observers are increasingly concerned about the potential impact of current academic working conditions on mental health, particularly in PhD students. The aim of the current study is threefold. First, we assess the prevalence of mental health problems in a representative sample of PhD students in Flanders, Belgium (N=3659). Second, we compare PhD students to three other samples: (1) highly educated in the general population (N=769); (2) highly educated employees (N=592); and (3) higher education students (N=333). Third, we assess those organizational factors relating to the role of PhD students that predict mental health status. Results based on 12 mental health symptoms (GHQ-12) showed that 32% of PhD students are at risk of having or developing a common psychiatric disorder, especially depression. This estimate was significantly higher than those obtained in the comparison groups. Organizational policies were significantly associated with the prevalence of mental health problems. Especially work-family interface, job demands and job control, the supervisor’s leadership style, team decision-making culture, and perception of a career outside academia are linked to mental health problems.
Purpose
This paper presents an in-depth examination of the demand–control–support–model (DCS-model). Each hypothesis of the DCS-model is tested: the main effects of job demands, job autonomy, task ...variation and social support; the additive effects of job strain, active learning and iso-strain; and the interactive buffer-effects of job autonomy, task variation and support on job demands.
Methods
Data from a representative cross-sectional sample of 11,099 male and female wage-earners are investigated using log linear methods. The outcome measures are self-reported persistent fatigue, musculoskeletal complaints and emotional well-being.
Results
There is some support for each of the hypotheses. Quantitative job demands and superior support have the strongest effects. The job autonomy and buffer hypotheses are only partially supported.
Conclusions
The strong effects of job demands, support, job strain and active learning are suggesting that a policy aimed at improving psychosocial working conditions should focus on a bearable level of job demands and the quality of social relationships at work.
One of the most consistent findings in the social epidemiology of mental health is the gender gap in depression. Depression is approximately twice as prevalent among women as it is among men. ...However, the absence of comparable data hampers cross-national comparisons of the prevalence of depression in general populations. Using information about the frequency and severity of depressive symptoms from the third wave of the European Social Survey (ESS-3), we are able to fill the gap the absence of comparable data leaves. In the ESS-3, depression is measured with an eight-item version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies–Depression Scale. In the current study, we examine depression among men and women aged 18–75 in 23 European countries. Our results indicate that women report higher levels of depression than men do in all countries, but there is significant cross-national variation in this gender gap. Gender differences in depression are largest in some of the Eastern and Southern European countries and smallest in Ireland, Slovakia and some Nordic countries. Hierarchical linear models show that socioeconomic as well as family-related factors moderate the relationship between gender and depression. Lower risk of depression is associated in both genders with marriage and cohabiting with a partner as well as with having a generally good socioeconomic position. In a majority of countries, socioeconomic factors have the strongest association with depression in both men and women. This research contributes new findings, expanding the small existing body of literature that presents highly comparable data on the prevalence of depression in women and men in Europe.
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Abstract Background Knowledge of the mental health status of the general population in Belgium is limited. Only recently have prevalence rates and risk factors for depression and generalised anxiety ...been identified. However, the question remains whether there are statistically significant differences between foreign origin groups and the native population. Methods Basing our study on data from the Belgian Health Interview Survey 2001 and focusing on the adult population aged 18–65 ( N = 7224), we consider eight risk factors for depression and generalised anxiety as assessed by the Symptom Checklist 90-subscales. The risk factors are region of origin, gender, age, household type, labour market position, educational level, household income and home ownership. Our approach involves weighted logistic regression. Results Analysis shows that most depressive symptoms are more prevalent among persons of Turkish or Moroccan origin than among Belgians or people from other EU Member States. This is not the case, though, for anxiety symptoms. However, if we consider depression and generalised anxiety as a syndrome, we find significantly more of the 10% highest SCL-scores in Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. Multivariate analysis indicates that their higher prevalence rate of anxiety is entirely attributable to their lower socioeconomic position. In the case of depression, the risk decreases only partly, leaving a significant association with Turkish or Moroccan origin. Conclusion In Belgium, depression and generalised anxiety are more prevalent in the population originating from Turkey and Morocco than in population groups originating from within the European Union.
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