[Mental health of hospital nurses]

The mental health status of 79 woman hospital nurses and 69 woman office workers with less than three years of service were examined with the "mental disorder" scale and the "loss of morale" scale in a cross-sectional survey. The mentally disordered status characterized by "neurasthenia symptoms" and "feeling job hard," which is similar to "burn-out syndrome," was observed in nurses especially in their first year of service. Multivariate analysis shows that their mental health status is mainly associated with the severity of job and their stress coping behavior. When these confounding variables were adjusted, no significant difference of mental health status could be observed between the two groups. It is therefore not considered that this unhealthy status observed among the nurses is caused by their specific work conditions.