Government employees and depressive and anxiety disorders: A systematic review

Abstract

Introduction

Depressive and anxiety disorders are common among working adults and costly to employers and individuals and their prevalence is high. Public sector employees are also vulnerable to poor mental health, mainly where have been occurring organisational changes similar to private sector concepts.

Objective

To highlight the unmet mental needs for new vulnerable working population, government employees.

Methods

The search was conducted using PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, B-on, Science Direct with the terms “government employees”, “federal employees”, “depressive disorders”, “anxiety disorders”. Using the PRISMA methodology, 1374 articles were considered with the search terms and if were published in the last 10 years; after a review of the title and summary, 5 eligible studies in english were included.

Discussion

Mental disorders are growing public health problem, and creating an enormous toll of suffering, disability and economic loss. There are few studies about depressive and anxiety disorders in public sector and those confirm that it would be to examine to what extent national characteristics can explain why individual and organizational characteristics are more related to them in some countries than in others, especially not including military or police officers who usually are submitted to high psychological distress.

Conclusions

Workplace health promotion in addressing job stress is crucial to fight against to a range of mental health outcomes. Mental health screening in the public sector may contribute for changes to the traditional roles of government and its management structures and must be encouraged to find out the underlying mechanisms of developing depressive and anxiety disorders.

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.