Background The physical and mental health of local poverty alleviation officials is closely related to the implementation efficiency of the government's poverty alleviation polices. At present, there are few studies on work pressure and mental health issues in this group, especially for those working in minority areas.
Objective The study takes Liangshan as an example, evaluates the relationship between work pressure and mental health of local poverty alleviation officials in ethnic minority areas within the effort-reward imbalance (ERI) model.
Methods From November to December in 2019, a total of 3 556 local poverty alleviation officials of all five categories in Liangshan Prefecture were investigated online. Work pressure, over-commitment, and mental health status were measured with the ERI Questionnaire and the 12-Item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). ERI index (an indicator of work pressure) > 1 indicated high effort-low reward and a high degree of imbalance; the upper tertile scores of over-commitment (total 6-30 scores) indicated high over-commitment; the GHQ-12 score (total 12 scores) ≥ 4 was considered as suspected mental health problems. Logistic regression method was used to analyze the relationship between effort-reward imbalance, overcommitment, and mental health after controlling for age, gender, working years, education level, and other variables.
Results Finally, 3 047 valid questionnaires were collected, and the valid recovery rate was 85.69%. The ERI index was 1.11±0.36, the score of over-commitment was 19.78±3.84, 63.0% of the local poverty alleviation officials experienced effort-reward imbalance at work, and 23.2% of them were in the state of high over-commitment (score ≥ 20). The median score (min, max) of GHQ-12 was 2.00 (0, 12.00), and the positive rate of suspected mental health problems was 26.6%. The results of logistic regression showed that after controlling the variables of age, gender, ethnic group, religion, education level, marital status, and working years, the risks of mental health problems of the participants with effort-reward imbalance were 1.62 (95% CI: 1.34-1.96) times of those with effort-reward balance; the risks of mental health problems of the participants with high over-commitment were 3.67 (95% CI: 3.04-4.43) times of those with low over-commitment.
Conclusion Most of the local poverty alleviation officials in Liangshan Prefecture are experiencing effort-reward imbalance at work, and the positive rate of suspected mental health problems is high, which indicates the negative impact of work pressure on their mental health.
DownLoad: