Relationship of activities outside work to sleep and depression/anxiety disorders in Korean workers: the 4th Korean working condition survey

BACKGROUND: Sleep disorders and depression/anxiety disorders are long-standing and significant problem for mental health. Also there are already known so many negative health effect of these disorders. But there were few studies to examine the association between activities outside work and forementioned disorders. So this study aimed the association of those things by using the Republic of Korean data. METHODS: Data from 32,232 wage workers were used in the 4th Korean Working Condition Survey. General and occupational characteristics, sleep disorders, depression/anxiety disorders and activities outside work are included in questionnaire. To find the relationship between activities outside work and sleep, depression/anxiety disorders, multivariate logistic regression analysis was used after adjusting for general and occupational characteristics. RESULTS: We observed that volunteer activities increased the odds ratio of both sleep disorders and depression/anxiety disorders(Odds ratio[OR] = 1.35, 95% confidence interval[CI]: 1.03–1.78 and OR = 1.54, 95% CI: 1.29–1.84, respectively). And self-development activities increase the odds ratio of sleep disorders(OR = 1.35, 95% CI: 1.17–1.57). Gardening activities lowered the odds ratio of depression/anxiety disorders(OR = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.59–0.94). CONCLUSION: Some of activities outside work were related to sleep disorders and depression/anxiety disorders among Korean wage workers. Our results showed negative health effect of some kinds of activities outside work such as volunteering and self-devlopment compared to other studies that emphasized positive effect of those activities for health.