As of 2023, 23 percent of individuals in the United States have received a diagnosis of depression from a healthcare professional, a proportion five percent greater compared to 2019. With growing rates of prevalent and incident depression, it has become critical to understand factors associated with the trajectory of depression through the lifespan. It is known that depression odds and depressive symptoms peak in midlife and decline into older adulthood.
Moreover, it has been suggested that participation in regular leisure-time physical activity may assist in attenuating depressive symptoms and lowering odds of prevalent and incident depression. The same relationship has not been demonstrated between participation in occupational physical activity and depression.
However, no studies to date have simultaneously examined the relationship between participation in leisure-time physical activity and occupational physical activity with prevalent depression in middle-aged and older adults, while accounting for factors that may vary between jobs such as income and perceived job challenges. As such, the aim of this dissertation was to comprehensively evaluate this research area.
The present dissertation consisted of three research manuscripts: 1) A scoping review designed to synthesize evidence regarding participation in leisure time and occupational physical activity with prevalent and incident depression (Chapter II), 2) a pilot study assessing changes in life, financial, and job satisfaction across varying levels of job physical effort in individuals with and without prevalent depression (Chapter III), and 3) an investigation of the relationship between frequency of job physical effort and leisure time physical activity with odds of prevalent depression, both alone and when adjusted for potential covariates such as age, sex, antidepressant medication use, income, and perceived job discrimination and work inequality (Chapter IV).
The included scoping review reported consistent benefits with increased volume of leisure time physical activity for attenuating depressive symptoms as well as prevalent and incident depression, and supported the notion that volumes of physical activity that are below recommended levels may still be beneficial for depression. Moreover, no relationship or a detrimental relationship between occupational physical activity and prevalent and incident depression was noted. Chapters III and IV utilized the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study to access a representative sample of middle-aged adults in the US. In chapter III, it was observed that individuals working high physical effort jobs and with prevalent displayed declines in life and job satisfaction compared to ten years prior when compared individuals working jobs with lower levels of physical effort regardless of depression status.
Expanding on these findings, data from Chapter IV demonstrated a positive relationship between frequency of job physical effort and prevalent depression odds with no relationship between frequency of leisure time physical activity and odds of prevalent depression, both unadjusted and when adjusted for age, sex, antidepressant medication use, and income. Significantly, this relationship was attenuated when models were further adjusted for participant perceptions of chronic job discrimination and work inequality, indicating that perceived job challenges may partially explain the positive relationship between occupational physical activity and depression.
Collectively, these data identify middle-aged individuals with depression working high physical effort jobs as a population at a potentially elevated risk for impaired trajectories of depression into late life. Future work should assess other factors potentially contributing to this relationship including perceived coworker and manager support, negative spillover from work to home, and perceptions of autonomy and control in work. Moreover, longitudinal data in this area would also be beneficial due to the cross-sectional nature of the studies included in this dissertation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/a62a-h883 |
| Date | January 2025 |
| Creators | Sckocheva, Marie Jasmine |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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