association between occupational noise exposure and depression

Noise-induced hearing loss (nihl) is a common occupational disorder. previous studies have investigated the role of hearing deprivation in mood disorders, especially depression. the aim of this study was to elucidate the relationship between nihl and depression in employees of an iron ore plant. this was a cross-sectional study on 409 employees with at least one year of job experience. in order to assess the association between noise exposure and nihl with depression, and based on the results of audiometry, employees were categorized into three groups: without noise exposure, with noise exposure and without hearing loss, and with noise exposure and hearing loss. the beck depression inventory ii (bdi-ii) was used to assess the degree of depression. demographic data and the bdi-ii scores were compared among the three groups. the mean±sd age of the participants was 34.43±7.8 years. the bdi-ii score was significantly higher in employees with noise exposure (with and without hearing loss) than in employees without noise exposure (p<0.001). categorical analysis of the bdi-ii score showed a significantly higher prevalence of normal patients in patients among those without noise exposure compared to the two other groups (p<0.05). the results of this study showed that depression was more prevalent in employees with exposure to noise in their workplace, regardless of suffering from nihl, than in employees without noise exposure.