Tracing symptoms of psychological health status among construction employees

Abstract

Psychological health condition is known to be complex and multidimensional, with several scales developed as measures of its symptoms. The absence or presence of negative symptoms has been used to describe the state of psychological well-being and psychological ill-being, respectively. This study gathered 48 validated items from previous studies as symptoms of psychological health conditions. The 48 symptoms identified were explored among 300 construction employees in Ghana to determine their psychological health status. Thematic analysis was used to group the 48 symptoms into four main constructs, namely: physical symptoms, emotional symptoms, cognitive symptoms, and behavioral symptoms. A comparative analysis was conducted with the two groups of respondents, namely construction professionals and construction trade workers, to identify the group that is more prevalent with psychological well-being or ill-being conditions. The findings revealed that a significant number of the respondents had experienced the negative symptoms of psychological health conditions. The study also revealed statistically significant differences in the level of experience of psychological health conditions among the two construction employees, with psychological ill-being conditions found to be more prevalent in construction trade workers than the construction professionals. The findings from the study confirm the need to develop preventive psychological health management models for construction employees. The 48 symptoms put together as a measure for psychological health status had an acceptable internal consistency and reliability, and hence can be adopted by researchers and stakeholders to determine psychological health status. This study, therefore, makes an impactful contribution to the field of occupational health psychology.