Beyond the 9-5: How Your Job Could Be Causing Your Depression

A high-prestige job might unwittingly become the reason for the gradual collapse of your mental well-being. Nowadays, a high-pressure work environment and demands to climb the corporate ladder can exacerbate depressive states.

Apart from that, achieving career success and personal fulfillment becomes somewhat blurred in many ways with workaholics, who are willing to sacrifice their psychological health to succeed in a career.

If you're sad, anxious, demotivated, or bored of climbing the corporate ladder, this is a classic example of work depression—a rapidly spreading scourge affecting the workplace.

Read on to find out the often overlooked connection between your job and mental state. Learn how subtle workforce factors might exacerbate your depression. Understanding these hidden dynamics goes a long way in advocating for a healthy working environment that empowers individuals and safeguards their mental health.

What Is It?

Depression is a mental health problem that is leading to the suffering of over 20 million adults in the US. Although the job might not be the cause of depression, it can prompt the experience of people living with depression in the workplace. It is very difficult to know the kind of things that cause stress and how you can know your surroundings.

Toxic workplaces where relationships between employees and management are strained tend to increase hostility and depression in the workplace. Depression manifests itself in multiple ways. It is either through thoughts, behaviors, or feelings by workers. For example, employees for a firm like grademiners might portray harmful behaviors like gossip, bullying, poor communication, and harassment.

What Signs Manifest?

It is difficult to pinpoint a case of depression due to its complex nature. This is because the condition varies due to the workplace settings. It deeply affects your functioning and productivity both at work and at home.

Some common ways it manifests itself in the workplace setting include:

• You feel anxious, especially when managing stressful situations or thinking about work while away from your desk.
• Missing work by calling in sick or forming excuses to get extra time off work to recuperate and re-energize.
• Quickly losing interest or pleasure in activities or hobbies that initially made you happy.
• Low interest and motivation to take on new tasks at work, especially with duties you found interesting or exciting.
• Missed deadlines and goals due to lack of commitment to work and complete tasks, avoiding meetings or phone calls, and failing to achieve their career goals.
• Difficulties experienced with concentration, remembering, or making decisions at work.

What Can Cause It?

Why would an individual earning a six-figure salary suffer from work depression? Money solves everything. That is not necessarily true! Various factors might increase depressive symptoms at work. There are some common themes exhibited at the workplace that trigger signs of depression at work. Here are a few causes behind your mental condition:

Dismissive Managers

Thus, it is logical that if a manager belittles, ignores, or is highly critical of a worker, the likely result for the worker is a greater propensity toward work-induced depression at work. Managers who make work unbearable are disregarding and failing to value the stakeholders they oversee. It is a recipe for poor performance and high turnover, merging into a bad work environment.

Workplace Politics

Negative workplace politics like self-promotion, factionalism, gatekeeping, bossism, and territorialism can spiral out of control and spell trouble. Workers receiving these politics can feel decreased morale, reduced productivity, and increased conflict.

Lack of Reward/recognition

The negative effects of the poor organizational structure are connected to destroying confidence in the work and the company employees are working for. As a result, employees feel demoralized and quit their jobs, as they can do nothing with unbearable conditions for work. Workers report a significant imbalance between effort and reward and emotional distress, which has a variety of mental and physical disorders.

Workplace Bullying

An instance of workplace bullying leads to increased stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, and depression. Workers feel their sense of security is undermined by current unpleasant interactions. It can cause tension, anxiety, and sadness.

High Job Demands

Job strain due to high job demands can result in occupational-related mental health. Instances of limited work support and training to use their skills or discretion demoralized the workforce. Some employees feel pressure to perform over and feel overwhelmed or unable to cope.

Is Remote Work a Viable Solution?

The only positive in our eyes that the COVID-19 pandemic can give is a chance for remote work to replace traditional workplaces. This system allows individuals to create a boundary between their personal lives and professional work, increasing the possibilities of ecological improvements. Here, many changes come with regular upheavals in a person's routine. We have to work daily to adjust the habits and perceptions we use in a workplace to this specific space division.

On the other hand, the difficulties of creating a routine in a closed space cannot be overlooked. People often become more relaxed in their homes, which affects their self-discipline and willingness to perform meaningful activities. This may lead to depressive feelings at home and dark thoughts about a person's future.

A lack of a social work environment can result in complete isolation and loneliness, meaning a person has no contact with others.

In addition, remote job faces different caveats to expedite depression due to increased screen time due to constant chats or messages, phone calls, and video calls. There are also cases where remote workers work more hours than office workers. The increased workload might result in burnout and depression.

How Does It Affect Your Productivity?

Working with your mind already preoccupied with external factors affecting your mental state is hard. Here is how a depressed mind can reduce your productivity:

• Procrastination – A preoccupied mind tends to procrastinate. Workers delay completing tasks, negatively affecting their work performance and productivity. They fail to achieve their work goals promptly.
• Fatigue – Depression impacts neurotransmitters linked with alertness and our reward systems, lowering one's energy levels. This results in reduced reaction time, slow information processing, absent-mindedness, reduced coordination, and decreased awareness in the workplace setting.
• Absence – Depressed workers often take sick days due to physical symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, and sleep disturbances. Even when they show up to work, they lack the motivation to concentrate and complete tasks efficiently.
• A decline in problem-solving and creativity - Apart from fatigue, most victims of work depression process information slowly, which hampers their creativity and problem-solving skills. It limits their thinking and ability to form creative ways to solve work-related problems.

Key Takeaway

We can tell you that it is a big deal to experience symptoms of work depression. You could feel several emotions, such as anxiety, sadness, fatigue, reduced morale, boredom, insomnia, and worthlessness.

We will highly recommend that you seek help from professional health should you find yourself in such a situation. Talk to a counselor, a therapist, or a behavioral provider near you. You are not alone. Practice healthy behavior at your workplace. These could be exercising, eating a balanced diet, and journaling.