Double Jeopardy: The Roles of Job Autonomy and Spousal Gender Ideology in Employed Women's Mental Health.

Employed women persistently suffer in mental health despite more family-friendly workplaces. The job demand-control theory argues that employed women's mental health depends on their job autonomy, while sociological research on the gender division of household labor locates the cause in how much they are expected by husbands to contribute to housework. The article integrates the two streams of literature by arguing that employed women's job autonomy and their spousal gender ideology interact to shape their mental health. Using nationally representative household-level panel survey and fixed effects models, the study showed that job autonomy improved employed women's mental health, but the benefits depended on their spousal gender ideologies. Specifically, women suffered a "double jeopardy" in mental health when they lacked job autonomy and had traditional husbands. In contrast, when women's husbands had an egalitarian gender ideology, they enjoyed mental health regardless of job autonomy. In addition, women's self-gender ideology did not predict their own or their husbands' mental health. The results point to a societal-level change in men's gender ideology as a fundamental way to improve employed women's family well-being. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11482-022-10090-8.

Do work-family initiatives improve employee mental health? Longitudinal evidence from a nationally representative cohort.

BACKGROUND: Work stress and work-family conflict are important correlates of affective disorders. The article explored (1) whether the wide adoption of work-family initiatives improve a national workforce's mental health; (2) whether the potential benefits differ between the initiatives that give employees autonomy over job quality (flexible schedule and telework) or job quantity (work hours); (3) whether the effects depend on employee's perceived availability or actual usage of the initiatives, and if so, what are the respective mechanisms; and (4) whether there are gender differences in the mental health effects. METHODS: Fixed-effects analyses of five-wave panel surveys from 2010 to 2020 on a probability sample of 34,484 British workers, which measured mental health with the GHQ-12 scale. Job satisfaction and leisure time satisfaction were tested as mediators. RESULTS: Perceived availability of work-family initiatives improved men and women's mental health by increasing their job satisfaction. Actual usage of work-family initiatives improved women's, but not men's, mental health by increasing their job satisfaction and leisure time satisfaction. The mental health benefits of flexible schedule and telework initiatives are larger than reduced work hours initiatives. LIMITATIONS: The exploratory study used a broad mental health outcome and did not measure work-family initiatives' effects on specific affective disorders such as anxiety and depression. The study could not eliminate time-varying confounders. CONCLUSIONS: Actual and perceived job quality are important in workplace mental health promotion. Organizational leaders and policymakers can offer flexible work time and place to reduce work-family conflict and prevent employees' affective disorders.

National survey of mental health and life satisfaction of gig workers: the role of loneliness and financial precarity.

OBJECTIVES: To compare the mental health and life satisfaction of those employed in the gig work and contingent work with those in full-time or part-time work and the unemployed in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. To explore the possible mechanisms of latent and manifest benefits of employment, such as financial precarity and loneliness. DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. PARTICIPANTS: A representative sample of 17 722 employed and unemployed British adults, including 429 gig workers. People with disability, retirees and full-time students are not included in the sample. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Mental health (General Health Questionnaire-12 score) and life satisfaction (a direct question from UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS)) as outcomes. Self-reported loneliness (four widely used questions from UKHLS) and financial precarity (a direct question from UKHLS) as mediators. RESULTS: Gig workers reported mental health and life satisfaction worse than those employed full time and part time, but better than the unemployed. Mediation analyses showed that gig workers' worse mental health and life satisfaction than other workers were explained by their higher levels of loneliness and financial precarity, while gig workers' better mental health and life satisfaction than the unemployed were explained by their less financial precarity. CONCLUSIONS: Informal and freelance economy provided manifest benefits of employment to gig workers compared with unemployment but lacked latent benefits of employment. Public policies should provide social support to freelance and contingent workers to reduce their loneliness and improve their psychological well-being, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hand Hygiene and Mask-Wearing Practices during COVID-19 among Healthcare Workers: Misinformation as a Predictor.

Poor public health information is a hurdle in infectious disease control. The study aims to examine whether healthcare workers adhere to hand hygiene and mask-wearing guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic and to explore their exposure to misinformation about the pandemic as a predictor. A cross-sectional survey was sent to 518 healthcare workers across Indonesia, the fourth largest nation in the world, in September 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The respondents reported whether they adhered to the guidelines of hand hygiene and mask wearing and whether they believed in four pieces of misinformation about the origin, severity, contagion, and prevention of COVID-19. The association between misinformation and hand hygiene and mask wearing was tested with logistic regression models controlling for demographic and health-related covariates. Approximately 25% of healthcare workers did not always adhere to hand hygiene guidelines and approximately 5% did not adhere to mask-wearing guidelines. There are significant associations between all four pieces of misinformation and hand hygiene and mask wearing. It is important to improve public health information about COVID-19, which may hold key to healthcare workers' hand hygiene and mask wearing and to protect their health and patients' safety.

Leisure time activities and biomarkers of chronic stress: The mediating roles of alcohol consumption and smoking.

AIMS: Previous research found an association between leisure time activities such as arts and cultural activities and self-reported health over the life course-a measure prone to response bias. This study tested the relationship between arts and cultural activities and allostatic load, a biomarker of chronic stress, and examined risky health behaviors, including alcohol consumption and smoking, as possible mediators. METHODS: The sample consists of 8948 adults from the second wave of the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study, which is representative of the British population. The cross-sectional association between arts and cultural activities and allostatic load was tested with negative binomial models, and the mediation roles of alcohol consumption and smoking in the association was tested with the Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) decomposition method. RESULTS: Frequent participation in arts, frequent attendance of cultural events, visits to museums or galleries, and visits to historical sites have negative associations with allostatic load. The associations are mediated by lower frequency of alcohol drinking and smoking. CONCLUSIONS: Cultural capital may promote health by reducing the frequency of health risk behaviors such as drinking alcohol and smoking. Future research and public health policies should consider whether cultural capital acts as a social determinant of health to promote healthy leisure activities over the life course.

Moving beyond family: unequal burden across mental health patients' social networks.

PURPOSE: Although the family burden of mental health problems on patients' close relatives was widely acknowledged, little was known about how mental health problems affected the quality of life of other types of social relationships of patients, through what mechanisms, and under what conditions. The study aims to explore the burden on all types of relationships of mental health patients and explain why and when the burden is unequal across different relationships. METHODS: The association between different types of relationships and the levels of burden was examined with dyadic data of 1178 patient-acquaintance relationships in the United States and random effects multilevel models. Frequency of contacts was tested as a mediator. The severity of mental health problems was tested as a moderator. RESULTS: All types of relationships of patients borne a significant burden. Close relatives including parents, spouses, children, and siblings suffered a greater burden than distant relatives and non-relatives. The unequal burden was partly explained by the frequency of contacts with patients. The burden of close relatives significantly increased when patients' mental health problems were more severe. CONCLUSION: Mental health patients put a burden on their frequent contacts outside core families, especially when their problems were more severe. Public health policies should attend to the quality of life of mental health patients' all types of acquaintances in the wider society.

Youth mental health before and after the control of the coronavirus disease 2019: A nationally representative cohort study of Chinese college students.

Background: To investigate youth mental health changes over the course of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) using a national probability sample and longitudinal design. Methods: A representative sample of 4918 Chinese college students were surveyed during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic for the first wave and after the new cases steadily declined for the second wave. Mental health was measured by the ten-question Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K-10). Logistic regression model was fitted to compare changes in psychological distress before and after the peak of the pandemic. Results: Of the respondents of both waves, 45.04% reported psychological distress during the initial outbreak of the pandemic and 26.49% reported it when new COVID-19 cases steadily declined. Psychological distress significantly reduced after the peak of the pandemic but persisted in some students. Limitations: The study measured psychological distress once after the initial control of the COVID-19. More psychiatric disorders need to be traced as the pandemic continues to evolve. Conclusions: Although effective control of COVID-19 benefited young people's mental health, psychiatric disorders continued to be prevalent. Future research public health policies should target the speedy recovery of the high-risk cases with persistent mental health problems.

Prevalence and predictors of general psychiatric disorders and loneliness during COVID-19 in the United Kingdom.

Despite ample research on the prevalence of specific psychiatric disorders during COVID-19, we know little about the broader psychological impact of the pandemic on a wider population. The study investigates the prevalence and predictors of general psychiatric disorders measured by the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and frequency of loneliness during COVID-19 in the United Kingdom, a country heavily hit by the pandemic. We analyzed 15,530 respondents of the first large-scale, nationally representative survey of COVID-19 in a developed country, the first wave of Understanding Society COVID-19 Study. Results show that 29.2% of the respondents score 4 or more, the caseness threshold, on the general psychiatric disorder measure, and 35.86% of the respondents sometimes or often feel lonely. Regression analyses show that those who have or had COVID-19-related symptoms are more likely to develop general psychiatric disorders and are lonelier. Women and young people have higher risks of general psychiatric disorders and loneliness, while having a job and living with a partner are protective factors. This study showcases the psychological impact, including general psychiatric disorders and loneliness, of broader members of the society during COVID-19 and the underlying social inequalities.