Psychosocial Risk at Work and Hazardous Alcohol Consumption Among Chile’s Working Adults

Karasek’s demand-control model and Siegrist’s effort-reward imbalance model have accumulated solid evidence regarding the associations between exposure to psychosocial risk at work (PSRW) and mental health of workers. However, there is scarce such evidence with regard to its associations with alcohol consumption. This study proposed to estimate the associations between exposure to PSRW and hazardous alcohol consumption (HAC) in Chile’s working adult population. The study was cross-sectional and a nationally representative survey was applied to 3,010 workers (65% male and 35% female, ages 20 to 65). The analysis included prevalences and logistic regression controlling for covariables. The adjusted analyses show that male workers exposed to low social support (OR=1.47; 95% CI:1.14–1.89), low reward (OR=1.38; 95% CI:1.07–1.78) and effort-reward imbalance (OR=1.34; 95% CI:1.04–1.73) have a higher chance of presenting with HAC compared to those who are not exposed. Female workers exposed to effort-reward imbalance (OR=2.34; 95% CI:1.10–5.58) have twice the risk of HAC compared with their reference group. This study shows evidence of the associations between HAC and exposure to a set of psychosocial risk factors from the Karasek and Siegrist models. For future research, it is recommended that HAC and PSRW factors be examined in a longitudinal study in order to control for possible confounding effects on these associations.