Duh: Poor Mental Health = Poor Performance
November 23, 2009 by Marijke Durning, RN
Filed under Duh Studies, Mental Health
Add another one to the Duh Files: Poor Mental Health Leads to Poor Job Performance. Really?
Researchers in Australia sent questionnaires to 60,556 workers that asked about anxiety, depression and other mental disorders. These results were matched with job perform
ance. The researchers were looking for a relationship between the two.
Guess what they found? If you said “those who had symptoms of mental illness didn’t do as well at work as those who didn’t,” go to the head of the class. The more productive workers were those who scored best on the questionnaires, having fewer or no symptoms of depression, anxiety or other mental illness. Put into numbers, this came out to a 20% difference. If a worker had a mental illness and received treatment, there was a 17% increase in productivity.
The conclusion? The authors said that if employers help employees work on mental health issues, they’ll have more productive employees.
Really.
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Image: PhotoXpress.com
