Prevalence and risk factors for depression, anxiety and stress among foreign construction workers in Singapore – a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Objectives

The aim of this study was to establish the prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress among foreign workers in the construction industry in Singapore.

Methods

This cross-sectional study used convenience sampling to include participants from three construction companies in Singapore that employed blue-collar workers from Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar,Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. The DASS-21 (Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scales) questionnaire was used to determine the occurrence of depression, anxiety and stress in the study population and a demographic and work environment questionnaire was used to account for the additional factors that could influence the personal and workplace characteristics.

Results

The study included 348 participants. About 29% of the study population exhibited moderate to extremely severe levels of depression, 37% showed moderate to extremely severe levels of anxiety and 33% expressed moderate to extremely severe levels of stress. Ethnicity and lack of awareness of job scope were found to be significant predictors of all three parameters studied, namely, depression, anxiety and stress. Regression analyses revealed that older workers were less prone to anxiety and lack of job clarity was correlated to higher levels of anxiety and stress.

Conclusions

The findings of this study indicate that all three aspects considered in this study, namely, depression, anxiety and stress are widely prevalent among the foreign construction workers in Singapore and effective measures needs to be put in place in order to reduce the same and provide a safe work environment for them. One measure that can be utilized to reduce the mental illness symptoms is to provide clear indications on the workers’ job scope as that was found to be a significant predictor in this study. Further studies need to be done to figure out other possible intervention measures that could be put in place to improve the mental wellbeing of foreign construction workers in Singapore.

Keywords:

• Depression
• anxiety
• stress
• foreign workers
• construction sector

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the UON Singapore’s Small Research Project Grant 2019 (grant number: UONS_SRPG_1906). The authors would like to thank JTC for helping to recruit suitable construction sites for the study and the authors are deeply indebted to the volunteers and research team from HealthServe who helped with the data collection. Last but not the least, the authors would like to express their gratitude to the management, supervisors and workers of the various construction sites that took part in this study, without whom this would not have been possible.