A new study assessing doctors has established that depression risk increases if someone spends more hours per week in a demanding job.
Working more than 90 hours can increase depression
According to Michigan Medicine researchers, individuals working more than 90 hours a week experienced changes in depression scores that were three times higher compared to those that worked 40-45 hours per week.
Surprisingly those that worked a large number of hours had high scores qualifying for moderate to severe depression diagnosis warranting treatment relative to those that worked fewer hours. Interestingly, researchers employed advanced statistical techniques to replicate a randomized clinical trial that took into account many aspects of doctors’ professional and personal lives.
Results demonstrate a “dose-response” effect between depression symptoms and hours worked. There was a 1.8 points increase in average symptoms on a standard scale for individuals working 40-45 hours, increasing to 5.2 points for those working over 90 hours.
According to researchers, working more hours was among the leading stressors contributing to depression among doctors. Researchers evaluated data from 11 years from over 17,000 recently graduated doctors working in hospitals across the US.
The information is derived from the Intern Health Study, which enrolls medical graduates every year for a 12-month study of their depression symptoms, sleep patterns, work schedules, and other factors as they finish their intern year, also known as the first year of residency. For the study’s doctors, workweek workloads typically ranged from 65 to 80 hours.
ACGME sets the time for residency training shifts
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), which establishes national guidelines in the United States for residency training, now places a cap on residents’ workweeks at 80 hours. However, there may be exceptions. ACGME also restricts the number of consecutive days that residents can work and the duration of a full shift.
This research shows that decreasing the typical workweek would impact how much interns’ symptoms of depression worsen over time and how many experiences diagnosable depression.
