Abstract
Background
Occupational hazards occur in all walks of life. China’s horticulture industry is undergoing rapid development. However, the mental health of garden workers has not received much attention. This study investigates the mental health status and influencing factors of Chinese garden workers and provides a basis for promoting their mental health and ensuring the healthy development of Chinese horticulture.
Methods
A cross-sectional survey of garden workers in Bei**g was conducted from 10 July 2021 to 10 October 2021. A total of 3349 valid questionnaires were recovered, with an effective response rate of 95.69%. Descriptive statistical analysis was carried out on the demographic characteristics, job satisfaction, stress, anxiety, and depression of garden workers, and the influencing factors affecting the mental health of Chinese garden workers were found through a t-test, variance analysis, and ordinal multi-class logistic regression analysis.
Results
Survey respondents were mostly male (54.4%) and under the age of 40 (64.1%). The anxiety and depression symptoms of the garden workers were moderate. Among staff members, 40.2% were in a normal state of stress. Gender, three meals on time, monthly income, and job satisfaction were the factors influencing stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms among garden workers.
Conclusion
Compared to medical staff and other groups, the stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms of Chinese garden workers are severe. Gender, monthly income, and job satisfaction are important factors affecting their mental health. Managers should continuously improve the working environment of garden workers, provide salaries that match their positions, and improve their job recognition and satisfaction to reduce the impact of negative emotions on personal health.
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Introduction
Occupational injuries occur in people from all walks of life, including medical workers, construction workers, farmers, and gig workers [1,2,3]. Occupational injuries are classified into four main types: physical, chemical, biological, and psychosocial hazards. Recently, an increasing number of researchers have focused on psychosocial hazards associated with occupational injuries [4,5,6,7].
Garden workers experience various occupational hazards during their daily work. For example, this work may involve confined spaces, slo** or unstable surfaces, and physical harm caused to employees by the need to climb trees into branches [7]. A Danish cohort study found an association between pesticide exposure and Parkinson’s disease in gardeners [8]. A survey of 367 horticultural and arboriculture practitioners in Hong Kong, China, found that workers in such industries had a high rate of accidents at work, they were generally exposed to biological hazards and were less aware of chemical injuries [29, 30]. The number of questions in this survey is approximately 100, and the sample size is approximately 500–1000. Possible situations, such as incomplete questionnaires, incorrect questions, and sampling distribution during the questionnaire survey, were considered. A total of 3500 questionnaires were distributed. This study conducted a questionnaire survey by directly contacting the person in charge of the garden companies. Bei**g has seven districts; five garden companies were randomly selected from each district. Using the probability sampling method, 10% of garden workers were selected from each garden company for a questionnaire survey. We sent a link to the online survey webpage to the participants via mobile phone and the gardeners answered in their free time. This survey method not only enables the manager of the questionnaire to monitor the collection of the questionnaire in real time but also effectively manages the data. The literature indicates that several researchers conducted studies using this survey method [36]. The items related to anxiety symptoms are 2, 4, 7, 9, 15, 19, 20; The items related to depressive symptoms are 3, 5, 10, 13, 16, 17, 21; The items related to stress symptoms are 1, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 18. This scale has been widely used in previous studies [37,38,39]. In this study, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this scale is 0.94, indicating good reliability.
Job satisfaction scale
The Job Satisfaction Scale, developed by Brayfield and Rothe (1951), initially contained 18 items [40]. This study uses a simplified version of the job satisfaction scale with a total of six items, including the nature of the work, superiors, colleagues, income, promotion opportunities, and six aspects of the work situation, using the five-point Likert-scale, from 1 (extremely dissatisfied/totally disagree) to5 (very satisfied/totally agree); the higher the score, the higher the satisfaction of the respondents. The effectiveness and reliability of this scale have been demonstrated in previous studies [41]. The Chinese version of this scale has also been used in previous studies on Chinese people [Limitations This study has the following limitations. First, the study was conducted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Garden workers’ mental health may have been affected by this factor, resulting in higher anxiety and depression scores. After the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, or in future research, this factor will be controlled to better understand the physical and mental health status of Chinese garden workers. Second, the cross-sectional study design may have led to an inability to determine causality. Third, this study did not consider the impact of regional, social, or cultural background factors on the physical and mental health of the garden workers. Future research should focus more on this issue and clarify the mechanisms by which social and cultural factors affect the physical and mental health of garden workers.
Conclusions
Chinese garden workers are more stressed, anxious, and depressed. Gender, whether they can eat three meals on time, monthly income, and job satisfaction are important factors affecting their mental health. Enterprises and the government should address this problem by continuously improving the working environment of garden workers, providing salaries that match their positions, and increasing the recognition and job satisfaction of garden workers to reduce the impact of negative emotions on personal health, thereby improving personal health level of garden workers and maintaining physical and mental health.
Data availability
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.
Abbreviations
- COVID-19:
-
Coronavirus Disease 2019
- PTSD:
-
Post-traumatic stress disorder
- HCP:
-
Healthcare providers
- DASS:
-
Depression Anxiety Stress Scale
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Acknowledgements
The authors give our sincerely thanks to all participants who helped our collecting data and in distributing questionnaires to the other subjects.
Funding
This work was supported by the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2023A1515010902), Project funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M701592).
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All authors have read and approved the manuscript. YX and YM wrote the first draft of the manuscript. YJ, LS and DL edited the paper. YLand ZT revised the manuscript. WG HY and YM analyzed the research data.
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All procedures involving human subjects will be approved by the Ethics Committee of the Southern Medical University (Number: 202132). All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. Participation in the survey was voluntary, and informed consent was obtained from all subjects in the survey questionnaire.
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**e, Y., Jiao, Y., Shi, L. et al. A study on the influencing factors of mental health of Chinese garden workers: a cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health 24, 765 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18025-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18025-8