A Toxic Workplace Triples Your Risk of Depression, New Study Finds

You know toxic workplaces are bad for mental health. You'll be surprised by how bad.

When Google set out on a massive research project to find out what makes teams successful a few years ago, they discovered something surprising. How smart team members are matters a lot less than how much they trust each other. Google called this essential quality for great teams "psychological safety," but in everyday language it just means teams who are supportive and respectful perform better. Turns out the secret to success is just being nice.

It also may be the secret to teams that don't make their members seriously depressed. When Australian researchers reviewed data on more than 1,000 workers recently, they discovered that working for a company that lacks psychological safety triples a person's chances of suffering from major depression.

Toxic teams kill both success and mental health.

The study was run out of The University of South Australia and recently published in the British Medical Journal. It's basic premise was simple: follow a group of workers over a year to see who among them is diagnosed with serious depression, then check to see what workplace factors are influencing people's chances of mental health issues.

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