Mobbing as a source of psychological harm in workers

Workplace harassment is a phenomenon as old as work itself. It constitutes a form of discrimination that violates labor laws and civil rights, a type of silent violence that affects work relationships, destabilizes the victim, and harms the physical and mental health of workers. The present study aimed to investigate the association between psychological harm and workplace mobbing through a descriptive narrative review of the literature. PubMed and Scopus databases were searched in July and August 2020 using the following Health Sciences Descriptors: “Harassment, Non-Sexual”, “Workplace Violence”, and “Working Environment”. Inclusion criteria were full-text articles written in English and published between 2015-2020. Thirty-three articles were preselected, of which 17 were excluded because they did not meet the inclusion criteria. Sixteen articles were included in the study. Globalization, in association with increased competitiveness in the work environment, has promoted a continuous and progressive deterioration of work relationships, which has been aggravated by the expansion of communication technologies and social media. The frequency of workplace mobbing and its consequences on the income and quality of life of workers has increased. The magnitude of the association between harassment and psychological harm is still underestimated due to low reporting rates, which are motivated by the trivialization of toxic work relationships. Regardless of how mobbing occurs in the workplace, it negatively affects the physical and mental health of workers, sometimes even leading to permanent disability.