Psychosocial work factors affecting mental health of young workers: a systematic review

Objective For the general working population, robust evidence exists for associations between psychosocial work exposures and mental health. As this relationship is less clear for young workers, this systematic review aims at providing an overview of the evidence concerning psychosocial work factors affecting mental health of young workers. Methods The electronic databases used were PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO and were last searched in October 2021. The eligible outcomes included depression-, stress-, burnout- and anxiety-related complaints, and fatigue, excluding clinical diagnoses and suicide-related outcomes. Only studies with workers aged 35 years or younger were included, which reported at least one association between a psychosocial work factor as exposure and a mental health complaint as outcome. Studies had to be in English, German or Dutch. Risk of bias was assessed using an instrument from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Data synthesis was conducted using GRADE. Results In total 17 studies were included in this systematic review, including data from 35,600 young workers in total. Across these studies 86 exposure-outcome associations were reported. Nine exposure-outcome associations could be synthesised. The application of the GRADE framework led to one low assessment for the association between psychosocial job quality and mental health. The certainty of evidence for the other eight associations in the synthesis was very low. Conclusions The current systematic review disclosed a high degree of uncertainty of the evidence due to conceptually fuzzy outcomes and exposures as well as large heterogeneity between studies.

Automated summary

This systematic review aims to provide an overview of the evidence concerning psychosocial work factors affecting the mental health of young workers. A total of 17 studies with a combined sample size of 35,600 young workers were included. The results indicate a high degree of uncertainty in the evidence due to conceptually fuzzy outcomes, exposures, and heterogeneity between studies. Only one association between psychosocial job quality and mental health was assessed as low certainty, while the certainty of evidence for the other eight associations was very low.