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

最近，在日本，由于工作场所的精神问题导致工人过度工作死亡和自杀而要求工人赔偿的人数正在增加。除了工作量巨大之外，工作场所兼职和临时工人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，但它们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各种工人身份的过度工作和混合的影响。检测健康影响的指标有：身心疾患问卷、工作生活方式问卷、生理检查问卷、定期健康检查的强制性实验室检查问卷。我们还使用DSM-IV来评估抑郁症，并使用JCQ和ERI来调查压力和工作环境。我们研究了考试与过度工作和工人的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工人健康的主要工具和策略，但我们发现健康检查对发现工人的问题几乎没有作用。此外，仅仅工作时间并不能精确地代表工作量。因此，我们似乎需要新的措施来解决过度工作和临时工作的健康问题，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，但对这一问题的研究很少，许多职业卫生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，它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.