[Depression in the workplace].

Abstract

Depression is the object of a dense literature, and synthesizing it is more of a utopian ideal rather than a concrete possibility. Several specific risk factors for mental health are found in the workplace: work overloads, defective communications, role conflicts, competitive climate, and tolerance of violence. At the same time, few preventive measures have been implemented against mental disorders at work, nor are many protective factors present. One worker in ten suffers from depression, anxiety, stress, or overwork. To be distinguished from "burnout", depressive symptoms must induce clinically significant suffering with substantial deterioration in functioning at work. For depression to be recognized as a workplace accident, the employee must show that it was triggered by an unforeseen and sudden event (or at least one certainly) due to or at work. The causal link between an event at work and the depression must be shown (in particular by expert medical testimony about stress factors and indicators of vulnerability to depression). Its recognition as an occupational disease can be based on the presence of psychosocial factors described by models of workplace stress and on its description by the occupational physician.