(in German)

Recent empirical studies and key media articles have highlighted the increased significance of mental disorders on reduced work ability, either transiently as a period of illness or permanently in the form of early retirement.

Our present report investigates this issue in a large survey study with a representative cohort of 4058 employees in Germany aged between 31 and 60 years. As our primary objective, we used multivariate methods to investigate the effect of work-related psychosocial factors and other individual-related predictors on burnout, depressive symptoms, and work ability. We also investigated possible interaction effects between the three outcome variables. In particular, the study investigated the role of burnout as a possible mediator between working conditions and depressive symptoms and work ability. The main results were as follows:

1. quantitative demands were identified as main risk factors for all three outcome variables, followed by cognitive demands and job insecurity
2. quality of leadership and degree of freedom at work represented protective factors
3. work related factors were more strongly associated with burnout as compared to depressive symptoms
4. burnout could be identified as a potential mediator regarding the influence of the work related factors on work ability
5. general self-efficacy turned out to be a protective factor for all three outcome variables
6. in general, there was no significant relationship between age and mental health in the interviewed employees
7. work ability declined with increasing age, but simultaneously the inter-individual variability within the group of older employees increased
8. women showed significantly more severe depressive symptoms, whereas no gender effect was associated with burnout and work ability

We demonstrated beyond these main results that a combination of negative work related factors - for example the coexistence of high quantitative demands and low degree of freedom at work - was associated with reduced work ability.
In conclusion, we confirmed the main research hypotheses of the project, especially with regard to the common impact of work-related and individual-related factors for mental health and work ability.

However, the results are only provisional because of the cross-sectional design of the present study. The verification of the reported results will be possible after a planned subsequent longitudinal phase of the project.

Please download the complete report "Work-related and individual-related predictors of the vulnerability to burnout and depressive symptoms" (in German only).