The question in the title has a real answer, and it is not the reassuring one. Adverse working conditions predict the later onset of depression in people who were not depressed when their jobs were measured, which is a causal claim of the kind a snapshot survey cannot support. [madsen-2017-jobstrain] This article covers which features of a job carry the risk, how to tell work-driven low mood apart from low mood that merely coincides with work, and what changes it.
It is not the hours, and it is not how hard the work is
The intuition is that punishing jobs cause depression and that the measure is intensity. The research points somewhere more specific.
Job strain is the most studied model, and the risk lives in a combination rather than in either half. High psychological demand paired with low decision latitude, meaning little say over what you do or how and when you do it, is associated with later depression. High demand paired with high control is not associated the same way. Madsen and colleagues pooled individual participant data across cohorts and found the association held for clinically diagnosed depression rather than only for self-reported symptoms. [madsen-2017-jobstrain]
Effort-reward imbalance is the other well-supported model: sustained high effort met with low return in pay, security, recognition or prospects. Stansfeld and Candy’s meta-analysis found both models predicting common mental disorder. [stansfeld-2006-psychosocial]
Long hours on their own show weaker and less consistent associations than almost anyone expects. A long week you control, that is recognised, and that you can see the point of is a different exposure from a shorter one that is none of those things. Our guide to workplace stress covers the demand-control model in more depth, including why “I am not even that busy” is such a common and misleading self-report.
The direction and relative ordering reported across Madsen and colleagues (2017), Stansfeld and Candy (2006) and the meta-review by Harvey and colleagues (2017). Values illustrate the pattern rather than reporting measured effect sizes.
The second view carries the finding people least expect. Harvey and colleagues reviewed the evidence across workplace risk factors and found bullying and job insecurity among the strongest, ahead of workload measures. [harvey-2017-canwork] Neither is addressed by resilience training aimed at the person on the receiving end, which is nonetheless the most commonly offered response.
The weekend test, and its two limits
The most useful thing you can do without anybody’s help is watch what happens when the work stops.
Low mood that lifts substantially over a long holiday and returns on the Sunday evening before you go back is pointing at the job about as clearly as this can be pointed at. Low mood that follows you unchanged into a two-week break is telling you something else.
Two limits, and both matter. A single weekend is too short: recovering slowly from a demanding week is ordinary and proves nothing either way, so the test needs a proper break to mean anything. And the two explanations are not exclusive, which is the case most often got wrong. A job can start something that then runs under its own power, at which point fixing the job is necessary and no longer sufficient. If that has happened, our guide to depression covers what treating it involves, and the depression screener takes a few minutes.
What actually changes it
Change the exposure where you can, and be specific about which one. “The job is bad” is not actionable; “I have no say over my priorities and they change weekly” is. The two models above are useful precisely because they name modifiable things: decision latitude, support from a manager, the balance between what you put in and what comes back. Sometimes the change needed is a manager, a team, a shift pattern or a scope of work rather than an employer, and the drastic option is worth testing against the specific ones before it is taken.
Treat the depression as its own problem in parallel. Waiting to feel better until the job is fixed means going untreated for as long as that takes, and depression makes the job harder to change by narrowing what you can see and dropping your capacity to act. Theorell and colleagues’ review of the work environment and depressive symptoms found the same psychosocial factors recurring across studies, which is an argument for changing them and not an argument against treating the person. [theorell-2015-workenv]
Be careful about deciding while depressed. Depression makes the most drastic option look like the only one, and that is a symptom rather than an insight. It does not mean the drastic option is wrong; it means it deserves to be tested when you are in a better position to test it.
A five-minute Sunday audit
For the evening the dread arrives. Write down the answers rather than thinking them, because the point is to have something specific to take to a manager, a doctor or yourself next week. What exactly am I dreading tomorrow? Is it a task, a person, or the whole thing? What in the last month did I have no say over? What would have to change for tomorrow to be tolerable rather than good?
3:00
Specific and written. 'The job is bad' cannot be acted on; one named task, one named person or one named decision can.
Keep it. Four Sundays of these is a pattern.
When to see a doctor
Speak to a doctor if low mood, loss of interest, or both have been present most days for more than two weeks, whatever you believe is causing it. The cause does not change whether it warrants treatment, and holding off until the work is sorted out means going untreated for however long that takes.
Go sooner if sleep has broken down, if you are drinking to get through evenings or Sunday nights, if concentration has fallen far enough that the work itself is now at risk, or if you are having thoughts of harming yourself.
If you are in crisis, contact your local emergency services or a crisis helpline.