Introduction: The software industries give employment opportunity to more than 5 trillion people. They are working more hours per day than in any other profession. The prolong working hours including night shifts of employees working in software industries makes them prone to develop psychological disorders. The study conducted to explore the prevalence of psychological disorders like stress, anxiety and depression among IT professionals. Studies have not been conducted to ind out the association between these disorders and sickness absenteeism.
Aim: To ind out the prevalence of psychological disorders, its association with sickness absenteeism among so tware professionals.
Materials and methods: Randomly selected 310 subjects from 20 IT companies at techno park, Trivandrum, Kerala. Semi-structured questionnaire, Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) was used for the study. Chi-square test, t test were done to compare continuous variables. Binary logistic regression was used to test the strength of associations of independent variables. The Odds Ratio (OR) with 95% con idence interval (CI) was obtained.
Result: Anxiety was the most prevalent psychological disorder among so tware professionals followed by depression and stress. Those who had taken sick leaves above 70% had anxiety 64.2 %, had depression 57.8 % and stress 55.3%. In logistic regression only anxiety and depression were found to be the predictors of signi icant sickness absenteeism which was quanti ied with help of Bradfords factor score.
Conclusion: The result showed that anxiety was the most prevalent psychological disorder followed by depression and stress. Psychological disorders like stress, anxiety and depression were also seen more among female employees than males.
Published Date: 2023-03-02; Received Date: 2022-11-02
