Investigating the Relationship between Anxiety and Depression with Fatigue and Job Involvement among Employees in a Copper Smelter

The purpose of this study was to investigate character variations and its relationship with occupational fatigue and involvement (labor participation) among employees in a melting unit at Sarcheshmeh Copper Complex. This cross sectional research was carried out on 145 employees of melting unit at Sarcheshmeh Copper Complex. A simple random sampling was used to collect data based on the three standard Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Swedish Occupational Fatigue Inventory (SOFI), and Labor Participation (Job Involvement). One-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient and Spearman s correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. The average age of the respondents was 38 ± 6.94 years and their average working experience was 10.46 ± 6.73 years. Among the personnel, (76%, n=111) had acute anxiety and (64%, n=93) had mild depression. The mean and standard deviation of job involvement for these subjects was 52.41 ± 7.12 (Desirable situation). There was a significant relationship among all aspects of fatigue including lack of energy, physical effort, lack of motivation, drowsiness (P 0.05) whereas the physical discomfort with job involvement did not show a positive relationship. The results indicated that there was acute anxiety, mild depression and high job involvement among the employees of melting unit.