Relationship between occupational stress and depression among nurses： the path of perceived organizational support and psychological capital

Abstract

BackgroundDue to the prominent particularity of medical work， nurses are prone to developing depression， which not only poses a considerable threat to the physical and mental health of nurses， but also affects the quality of nursing to some extent. Occupational stress is a known contributor to depression in nurses， whereas relatively little research has been done to investigate the underlying mediation path.ObjectiveTo explore the mediation effect of perceived organizational support and psychological capital on the relationship between occupational stress and depression among nurses， and to provide theoretical references for the prevention and treatment of occupational stress-induced depression in nurses.MethodsFrom March to August 2019， a stratified random sampling method was utilized to select a sample size of 720 nurses in each department of a grade A tertiary hospital in Shandong Province. All subjects were assessed using Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire （ERI）， Perceived Organization Support Questionnaire （POS）， Psychological Capital Questionnaire （PCQ） and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale （CES-D）. Pearson correlation was adopted to examine the correlation among above scales， and multilevel mediation analyses were conducted with model 6 in Process macro （version 3.3） for SPSS 26.0 using Bootstrap re-sampling method.ResultsA total of 658 nurses （91.39%） completed the effective questionnaire survey. ERI score was positively correlated with CES-D score （r=0.499， P<0.01）， and negatively correlated with POS and PCQ scores （r=-0.318， -0.275， P<0.01）. POS score was positively correlated with PCQ score （r=0.455， P<0.01）， and negatively correlated with CES-D score （r=-0.401， P<0.01）. PCQ score was negatively correlated with CES-D score （r=-0.567， P<0.01）. The total effect value of occupational stress on depression was 0.466 （95% CI： 0.399~0.534）. Perceived organizational support （indirect effect value of 0.027， 95% CI： 0.006~0.057） and psychological capital （indirect effect value of 0.059， 95% CI： 0.013~0.120）， separately from each other， mediated the relationship between occupational stress and depression， and a chained mediation effect of perceived organizational support and psychological capital was also demonstrated （indirect effect value of 0.051， 95% CI： 0.031~0.082）， accounting for 10.94% of the total effect.ConclusionOccupational stress is a influencing factor of nurses' depression， which can affect the occurrence of depression both directly and indirectly through either separate or chained mediation of perceived organizational support and psychological capital.

Keywords

• nurse
• occupational stress
• perceived organizational support
• psychological capital
• depression
• mediation analysis