Relationship between depressive symptoms and subjective occupational well-being among nursing home staff: the mediating role of resilience

Objective: To assess the prevalence of depressive symptoms and subjective occupational well-being, and examine the mediating role of resilience between depressive symptoms and subjective occupational well-being among nursing home staff as well. Materials and methods: The cross-sectional study involving 236 convenient nursing home staff with an average age of 25.73 years was conducted from November 2020 till January 2021 in Jinan and Heze city, Shandong Province. Participants filled out the questionnaires of demographic information, depressive symptoms, resilience and subjective occupational well-being. Descriptive analysis, Pearson correlations and mediation analysis based on PROCESS macro were conducted. Results: The study revealed that the prevalence of depressive symptoms among nursing home staff was 30.1%. Depressive symptoms were negatively related to subjective occupational well-being (r = -0.336, P < 0.001) and resilience (r = -0.373, P < 0.001), and resilience was positively correlated with subjective occupational wellbeing (r = 0.390, P < 0.001). Moreover, resilience mediated the relationship between depressive symptoms and subjective occupational well-being with the mediating effect accounting for 35.47% of the total effect. Conclusion: Depressive symptoms were highly prevalent among nursing home staff. Resilience could mediate the association between depressive symptoms and subjective occupational well-being. It is advisable to pay more attention to mental health among nursing home staff and contribute to the development of effective resilience improvement interventions to enhance subjective occupational well-being.