ORIGINAL ARTICLE Depressive symptoms in junior doctors: a follow-up study on work-related determinants Matthias Weigl • Severin Hornung • Raluca Petru • Ju ¨ rgen Glaser • Peter Angerer Received: 10 May 2011 / Accepted: 14 September 2011 / Published online: 29 September 2011 Ó Springer-Verlag 2011 Abstract Purpose The study investigates the long-term effects of accumulated working conditions on depressive symptoms in junior doctors. Drawing on the Job Demand-Control- Support model, this study aims to identify personal and job-related determinants for self-reported depression in junior doctors—a professional group that is vulnerable to depression. Methods We conducted a prospective cohort study with measures of work characteristics and depressive symptoms over three time-points among hospital doctors during postgraduate specialty training in Germany. Participants were 415 junior doctors with full-time contract (47.5% women; mean age, 30.5 years). The outcome was depres- sive symptoms assessed with the Spielberger State- Depression Scale. Odds ratios (OR) were computed to analyse the cumulative effect of initial depressive symp- toms scores, demographic variables, and working charac- teristics across T1 and T2 on subsequent depressive symptoms at T3. Results The percentage of junior doctors reporting depressive symptoms scores above a critical value varied between 12.0% at T1, 10.4% at T2, and 13.3% at T3; N = 34 doctors (8.19%) were classified as incident cases during the observation period. Elevated depressive symp- toms at T3 were positively predicted by depressive symp- toms scores across T1 and T2 (OR: 1.37; 95% confidence interval: 1.25–1.50) and negatively by professional tenure (0.54; 0.31–0.96), free weekends (0.52; 0.28–0.97), and job autonomy (0.35; 0.18–0.65). Conclusions After controlling for demographic and working time influences, findings suggest that junior doc- tors’ perceived job autonomy is negatively associated with future depressive symptoms. Enhancing job control emer- ges as a promising strategy to lower the risk of depression during first years of professional practice. Keywords Junior doctors Á Hospital Á Job conditions Á Autonomy Á Stress Á Depression Á Cohort study Introduction Depression is considerably more prevalent in young doc- tors than in the general population, especially during the first postgraduate years of training or residency in a hos- pital (West et al. 2006; Shanafelt et al. 2002; Tyssen and Vaglum 2002; Dyrbye et al. 2006). This partly explains the Ethics approval The Committee on Ethics of Human Research of the Medical Faculty, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, gave ethical approval for the study (No. 016/04). M. Weigl (&) Á R. Petru Á J. Glaser Institute and Outpatient Clinic for Occupational, Social, and Environmental Medicine, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Ziemssenstr. 1, 80336 Munich, Germany e-mail: matthias.weigl@med.lmu.de R. Petru e-mail: raluca.petru@med.lmu.de J. Glaser e-mail: juergen.glaser@med.lmu.de S. Hornung Department of Management and Marketing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, SAR, China e-mail: mssev@polyu.edu.hk P. Angerer Institute for Occupational, and Social Medicine, Universita ¨tsklinikum, Heinrich Heine Universita ¨t Du ¨sseldorf, Du ¨sseldorf, Germany e-mail: peter.angerer@med.lmu.de 123 Int Arch Occup Environ Health (2012) 85:559–570 DOI 10.1007/s00420-011-0706-8