Workplace stressors and mental health outcomes among personal support workers: A systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Although there is a growing focus on the mental well-being of licensed clinicians, there remains a scarcity of comprehensive evidence concerning the mental well-being of personal support workers (broadly defined as direct care workers), a vital segment of the healthcare workforce, particularly for aging populations. This review aims to identify, summarize, and synthesize the literature on work-related stressors associated with mental health problems among personal support workers, while also examining the potential influence of gender or sex differences in this relationship. METHODS: This systematic review searched the EMBASE, PsycINFO, PubMed/Medline, and Web of Science databases for relevant studies. Studies published between 1 January 2003 and 30 June 2024 were included in the review. A quality assessment of each study was conducted using the Joanna Briggs Institute Checklist for Analytical Cross-Sectional Studies and the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Checklist for Cohort Studies. Meta-analysis was not performed due to the heterogeneity of the studies' characteristics. RESULTS: Fourteen (14) articles met the inclusion criteria. They assessed burnout, depression, and/or anxiety among personal support workers who were exposed to various work-related stressors including high workload, aggressive client behavior, insufficient resources (e.g., physical and staffing), role ambiguity, conflict, personal growth, job satisfaction, discrimination, lack of co-workers or supervisors support, emotional suppression, extended working hours, complicated grief, and organizational support or respect. Aggressive client behavior, role ambiguity, resource inadequacy, and high workload emerged as the most frequently reported stressors. Burnout was the most frequently observed outcome. These relationships persisted in many multivariable analyses, even after adjusting for potential confounders. Also, females who experienced work-related stressors were more likely than males to report burnout, depression, or anxiety. LIMITATIONS: The considerable heterogeneity of various work-related stressors and measurements among selected studies prevented a meta-analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, this review's results suggest a significant association between major work-related stressors and mental disorders among personal support workers, while also emphasizing notable gender/sex differences in this relationship. These findings not only guide future research into the mental well-being of personal support workers but also underscore the importance for healthcare institutions of implementing organizational interventions to mitigate stressors and cultivate a more supportive work environment.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.011 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".