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Factors Related to Mental Health of Foreign Care Workers in Long-Term Care Facilities in Japan during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Comparative Study

This study aimed to evaluate the factors related to the mental health of foreign care workers in Japan’s long-term care (LTC) facilities and compare their results with those of native care workers. We conducted a cross-sectional survey covering 80 LTC facilities across Japan between August and Novem...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wu, Qian, Yamaguchi, Yuko, Greiner, Chieko
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9779326/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36554370
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192416491
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author Wu, Qian
Yamaguchi, Yuko
Greiner, Chieko
author_facet Wu, Qian
Yamaguchi, Yuko
Greiner, Chieko
author_sort Wu, Qian
collection PubMed
description This study aimed to evaluate the factors related to the mental health of foreign care workers in Japan’s long-term care (LTC) facilities and compare their results with those of native care workers. We conducted a cross-sectional survey covering 80 LTC facilities across Japan between August and November 2021. The survey mainly included mental health, workload, reward, sense of coherence, loneliness, COVID-19-specific factors and sociodemographic variables. The results show that workload was a distinct feature associated with the mental health of foreign care workers (n = 172) when compared with those of native care workers (n = 154). In addition, we found that the relationship between cultural adaptation and mental health in a sample of foreign care workers was mediated by loneliness and sense of coherence (SOC). Finally, we found that reward, loneliness, SOC, and COVID-19-specific factors had significant impacts on the mental health of both foreign and native care workers. These findings highlight the importance of support measures from the workplace for foreign care workers. Workplace interventions that focus on workload, reward, and sense of coherence strategies are required to address mental health improvement and may still be of value in dealing with the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.
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spelling pubmed-97793262022-12-23 Factors Related to Mental Health of Foreign Care Workers in Long-Term Care Facilities in Japan during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Comparative Study Wu, Qian Yamaguchi, Yuko Greiner, Chieko Int J Environ Res Public Health Article This study aimed to evaluate the factors related to the mental health of foreign care workers in Japan’s long-term care (LTC) facilities and compare their results with those of native care workers. We conducted a cross-sectional survey covering 80 LTC facilities across Japan between August and November 2021. The survey mainly included mental health, workload, reward, sense of coherence, loneliness, COVID-19-specific factors and sociodemographic variables. The results show that workload was a distinct feature associated with the mental health of foreign care workers (n = 172) when compared with those of native care workers (n = 154). In addition, we found that the relationship between cultural adaptation and mental health in a sample of foreign care workers was mediated by loneliness and sense of coherence (SOC). Finally, we found that reward, loneliness, SOC, and COVID-19-specific factors had significant impacts on the mental health of both foreign and native care workers. These findings highlight the importance of support measures from the workplace for foreign care workers. Workplace interventions that focus on workload, reward, and sense of coherence strategies are required to address mental health improvement and may still be of value in dealing with the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. MDPI 2022-12-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9779326/ /pubmed/36554370 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192416491 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Wu, Qian
Yamaguchi, Yuko
Greiner, Chieko
Factors Related to Mental Health of Foreign Care Workers in Long-Term Care Facilities in Japan during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Comparative Study
title Factors Related to Mental Health of Foreign Care Workers in Long-Term Care Facilities in Japan during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Comparative Study
title_full Factors Related to Mental Health of Foreign Care Workers in Long-Term Care Facilities in Japan during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Comparative Study
title_fullStr Factors Related to Mental Health of Foreign Care Workers in Long-Term Care Facilities in Japan during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Comparative Study
title_full_unstemmed Factors Related to Mental Health of Foreign Care Workers in Long-Term Care Facilities in Japan during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Comparative Study
title_short Factors Related to Mental Health of Foreign Care Workers in Long-Term Care Facilities in Japan during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Comparative Study
title_sort factors related to mental health of foreign care workers in long-term care facilities in japan during the covid-19 pandemic—a comparative study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9779326/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36554370
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192416491
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