Abstract
To clarify the occupational stress for psychiatric nurses, I studied the effects of occupational stress that on depressive mood, quality of life (QOL) and the relationship between them. The subjects are 211 of phychiatric nurses. I used the questionnaire as follows: a simple questionnaire on occupational stress, a Self-Rating Depression Scale, a WHOQOL26 survey, and a demographic survey including sex, age, work unit (acute or chronic), and the number of years working in psychiatry. The most common stress was "degree of burden from the job", and the ratio of the nurses working in the acute ward was high. With regard to "degree of control of the job", the ratio of the nurses working in the chronic ward was high. Moreover, the level of stress in "interpersonal relationships" increased with age. High stress claims regarding "compatibility" issues were found among male nurses, nurses with less than one year on the job, nurses with eight to ten years of experience, and nurses with more than 21 years of work experience. Over 65% of nurses had mild depressive mood. According to the results of the WHOQOL26 survey, female nurses scored lower in general in all aspects than their male counterparts except in the workplace environment domain. It appears that the pressure of balancing a family and nursing job was factors in the decline of QOL as the age of nurses increased. The results indicate that a relationship was found between stress, SDS and QOL, which suggests that a nurse's burden varies with the duties of his or her position, and because of this, nurses were easily susceptible to depressive mood, which decreases QOL.
