A study on the health effects of overwork and diversification of workers status

近日，在日本，因工作场所精神问题导致工人因过度工作致死和自杀而索赔的工人数量不断增加。除了巨大的工作量外，工作场所兼职和临时工的增加可能会影响工人的健康。这些工人不稳定的合同地位和较低的工资威胁到这些工人的基本权利，但也可能影响到全职工人。本研究项目的目的是从工人健康的角度调查工作场所中各种工人身份的混合和过度工作的影响。我们用来检测健康效应的指标是身心抱怨问卷、工作和生活方式、生理检查和定期健康检查的强制性实验室检查。同时采用抑郁自评量表(DSM-IV)和JCQ、ERI调查工作压力和工作环境。我们考察了考试与过度工作和工人各种合同状态之间的关系。目前，在日本，定期健康检查是保护和促进劳动者健康的主要工具和策略，但我们发现，健康检查对发现劳动者的问题的力量很小。此外，仅仅是工作时间并不能准确地代表工作量。因此，我们似乎需要针对过度工作和临时性工作的健康问题采取新的措施，我们尝试并报告了一些新的措施的结果，如自主神经功能和问卷调查。尽管这一问题的严重性和紧迫性，但对这一主题的研究很少，许多职业健康专业人员没有意识到它的重要性。进一步的研究是有必要的，应该从整个工作场所开始，包括全职和临时工。

Recently in Japan, number of claims for workers' compensation due to overwork to death and suicide of workers related to mental problems in the workplace are increasing. In addition to the huge workload, the increase of part-time and temporally workers in the workplace may affect the health of the workers. Unstable contractual status and lower wage of these workers threaten the basic rights of these workers but they may also affect full-time workers, as well. The purpose of the present research project is to investigate the impact of overwork and mixture of various workers' status in the workplace from the view point of health of workers. The indices we used to detect the health effect were questionnaire for physical and mental complaints, work and life style, physiological examination, and laboratory tests mandatory performed for periodical health examination. We also used DSM-IV for depression and JCQ and ERI to investigate the stress and work environment. We looked at the relationship of the examinations to overwork and workers' various contractual status. Currently in Japan, regular health examination is the main tool and strategy to protect and promote health of workers but we found that health examination has little power to detect the problem of workers. Also, mere working hours does not precisely represent the work load. Thus, it seems that we need new measures for the health problems of overwork and temporally work, and we tried and reported the results of some of the new measures such as autonomic nerve function and questionnaires. Despite the seriousness and urgency of the problem, there has been little study on this subject and many occupational health professionals have not realized its importance. Further study is warranted and it should be started by looking at the workplace as a whole, including both full-time and temporary workers.