Considerations about moral harassment as a contributory factor to depressive episodes at work: veiled violence and mental illness of workers

Abstract

Work is an important constituent element of the identity and subjectivity of the human being, whereas it can also participate in the processes of construction of physical or psychic suffering arise from demands that go beyond what an individual can perform in relation to its potentialities and limitations, especially if they occur in an environment with low quality of life at work. The present study, performed through a theme survey of the national literature, aimed to discuss the relationship of the moral harassment practiced in organizations with possible damages to the worker’s mental health, specifically the depressive episode. Based on the main scientific indexers (Scielo, BVS-Psi, PepsiCo and Google Scholar) and through the “moral harassment and depression” descriptors, with a chronologial delimitation to July 2018, we verified a significant amount of texts about moral harassment, as well as a lack of texts which correlate moral harassment and depressive episodes at work. Our final considerations point to the intimate relationship between moral harassment and psychic vulnerability in workers and, therefore, we propose some strategic actions for the performance of the area of People Management in organizations, aiming at preventing and combating the moral harassment.