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Time spent commuting to work and mental health: evidence from 13 waves of an Australian cohort study

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journal contribution
posted on 2017-09-15, 00:00 authored by Allison Milner, H Badland, A Kavanagh, Tony LaMontagneTony LaMontagne
Time-related stressors, such as long working hours, are recognized as being detrimental to health. We considered whether time spent commuting to work was a risk factor for poor mental health. Data from the Household, Income Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey were used to conduct fixed-effects longitudinal regression analyses. The outcome variable was the Mental Health Inventory, and the main exposure represented hours per week traveling to and from a place of paid employment. Effect modifiers included sex, low job control, high demands, and low job security. Compared with when a person commuted for ≤2 hours per week, there was a small decline (coefficient = -0.33, 95% CI: -0.62, -0.04; P = 0.025) in the Mental Health Inventory score when they commuted for over 6 hours per week. Compared with persons with high job control, persons working in jobs with low job control experienced significantly greater declines in the Mental Health Inventory score when commuting 4 to 6 hours per week and when commuting over 6 hours per week. We found no influence from the other hypothesized effect modifiers. These results suggest the importance of considering commuting time as an additional work-related time stressor.

History

Journal

American journal of epidemiology

Volume

186

Issue

6

Pagination

659 - 667

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Location

Oxford, Eng.

eISSN

1476-6256

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2017, The Authors