Telework and Mental Health during COVID-19

Inês Mendonça, Franz Coelho, Paulo Ferrajão and Ana Maria Abreu
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Inês Mendonça: Institute of Health Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 1649-023 Lisbon, Portugal
Franz Coelho: Institute of Health Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 1649-023 Lisbon, Portugal
Paulo Ferrajão: Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology, Universidade Europeia, 1500-210 Lisbon, Portugal
Ana Maria Abreu: Institute of Health Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 1649-023 Lisbon, Portugal

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 5, 1-23

Abstract: COVID-19 has come to change societal organization. Due to lockdowns, work typologies have been rethought and telework has gained strength. However, the impact of the constant use of information and communication technologies on the mental health of workers needs to be considered. We aimed to investigate the impact of different work conditions on mental health, to which end we disseminated an online questionnaire during lockdowns to assess imagined surveillance, mobile maintenance expectation, communication overload, feelings of entrapment, depression, anxiety, stress, and flourishing in four groups (employed in telework, employed on-site, employed in layoff, and unemployed). We computed mean comparisons and serial mediations. We show that depression and anxiety were more prevalent in women; parents flourished more than people without children; and people with a higher level of education feel more entrapment. Crucially, we show that telework was associated with imagined surveillance and communication overload, which mediated the association with mobile maintenance expectations and entrapment (which was exacerbated by parenthood), impacting mental health and the quality of life. However, this was also partially observed in the remaining work conditions. Finally, flourishing worked as a protector against mental health issues in all work conditions. We discuss this given the massification of digital migration.

Keywords: telework; ICTs; mental health; wellbeing; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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