OBJECTIVE: To review the recent descriptive and social epidemiology of common 
mental disorders in the workplace, including prevalence, participation, work 
disability, and impact of quality of work, as well as to discuss the 
implications for identifying targets for clinical and preventive interventions.
METHOD: We conducted a structured review of epidemiologic studies in community 
settings (that is, in the general population or in workplaces). Evidence was 
restricted to the peer-reviewed, published, English-language literature up to 
the end of June 2005. We further restricted evidence to studies that used recent 
classification systems; then, if evidence was insufficient, we reviewed studies 
that used standardized psychiatric screening scales. To distinguish this article 
from recent reviews of health and work quality, we focused on new areas of 
investigation and new evidence for established areas of investigation: 
underemployment, organizational justice, job control and demand, effort-reward 
imbalance, and atypical (nonpermanent) employment.
RESULTS: Depression and simple phobia were found to be the most prevalent 
disorders in the working population. The limited data on rates of participation 
suggested higher participation among people with depression, simple phobia, 
social phobia, and generalized anxiety disorder. Depression and anxiety were 
more consistently associated with "presenteeism" (that is, lost productivity 
while at work) than with absenteeism, whether this was measured by cutback days 
or by direct questionnaires. Seven longitudinal studies, with an average sample 
size of 6264, showed a strong association between aspects of low job quality and 
incident depression and anxiety. There was some evidence that atypical work was 
associated with poorer mental health, although the findings for fixed-term work 
were mixed.
CONCLUSIONS: Mental health risk reduction in the workplace is an important 
complement to clinical interventions for reducing the current and future burden 
of depression and anxiety in the workplace.