英國和芬蘭的研究人員通過對2000多名英國公務員工作狀態的調查發現，長時間工作的人更易患抑郁癥，每天工作11個小時以上或每周工作55個小時以上的人則面臨更大的風險；此外，最容易患抑郁癥的人群是女性、年輕人和薪酬等級較低且有飲酒習慣的人。調查問卷顯示，每天工作11個小時或更長時間的人患抑郁癥的概率比每天工作7-8個小時的職員高2.5倍。研究還發現，大部分長時間工作的人是拿著高薪、從事頗具挑戰性工作的男性，但他們患抑郁癥的比例卻相對較低。對此，研究人員認為，一種情況是，較高的收入能夠“緩和”心中的抑郁情緒，使他們沉醉在工作之中；另一種可能則是他們擁有更高水平的“社會支援”，比如來自下屬的支持。

If you regularly work overtime, you could be doubling your risk of depression, according to a new British study

Regularly working long hours in the office might increase your risk of a serious depressive episode, according to a new study.

According to findings published in the journal PloS ONE on Wednesday, people who regularly work 11 hours or more each day are more than twice as likely to experience a major episode of depression than colleagues who stick with an eight-hour work day.

Researchers from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and Queen Mary University of London examined records of more than 2,000 London-based white-collar workers in a five-year study. None of the recruits had a recent history of depression when they were enrolled in the study.

Those who worked 11 hours or more each day were between 2.3 and 2.5 times more likely to develop a major depressive episode than those who worked seven-to-eight-hour days. Researchers controlled for other factors, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, and general health.

"Long working hours don't just affect us because of the pressure and intensity of work itself, they affect us because we don't have enough time for all the other things we need for good mental health, such as good quality sleep, relationships, and opportunities for rest and exercise," Paul Farmer, chief executive of leading British mental health charity Mind, told WebMD. "Every time we squeeze more work in, many of us will be squeezing something else out.

While other studies have been done on work hours and depression, "results have not been conclusive because there is no standardized benchmark for what constitutes a 'normal' working day," reports WebMD.

A previous study by the same researchers, which also relied on the same database of London-based workers, found that overtime was linked with a 60 percent increase in coronary heart disease.

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(Agencies)

（英語點津?Rosy 編輯）