No surprise: working long hours can be depressing

That's the conlusion of a team of Finnish researchers who examined the association between working hours and depression among more than two thousand British civil servants.

Researchers at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and University College London found that those working more than eleven hours a day had more than double the risk of depression when compared with people who worked seven - to -eight hours a day.

Adjustments were made for factors like chronic physical disease, smoking, alcohol use, job strain and work-related social support.

The study by Marianna Virtanen, Stephen A. Stansfeld, Rebecca Fuhrer, Jane E. Ferrie and Mika Kivimäki was published online in PLoS one.