The Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Mental Health in the Personnel of an Oil Refinery in Iran

This research examined the relationship between job satisfaction and mental health among employees of an oil refinery in Iran. It was hypothesized that global job satisfaction and its five components: satisfaction with work, co-workers, pay, promotion, and supervision have negative correlations with the nine mental disorders: somatization (SOM), obsessive-compulsive (O-C), interpersonal sensitivity (I-S), depression (DEP), anxiety (ANX), hostility (HOS), phobic anxiety (PHOB), Paranoid ideation (PAR), and psychoticism (PSY). The JDI and the SCL-90-R were used to measure overall job satisfaction and its five components, and the nine mental disorders, respectively. The sample consisted of 828 subjects selected by a multiphase random method; 665 were regular employees and 163 were managers at different levels. Results indicated that global job satisfaction and its five components have negative correlations with the nine mental disorders at P<0.01 level of significance. These correlation coefficients have a range from -0.10 to -0.36 for regular employees and from -0.12 to -0.35 for managers. Only 8 correlation coefficients out of 108 did not reach statistical significance at P<0.05 level. The multiple correlation coefficients of the five job satisfaction facets and the nine mental disorders have a range from 0.17 to 0.38 for regular employees and from 0.34 to 0.45 for managers. All these multiple correlation coefficients were significant at P<0.01.