Mobile Work and Mental Health: The Challenges of Long-Distance Labour Commuting

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Author(s) / Creator(s)
- Dorow, Sara
SSHRC Awarded PEG 2019: The community organization Critical Incident Stress Management for Communities (Fort McMurray, Alberta) and a research team at the University of Alberta are leveraging their newfound partnership and combined expertise to launch the first Canadian study to systematically examine how mental health is shaped by the structural social and economic conditions of long-distance labour commuting. Our project builds on recent research, most notably in Australia, suggesting that a range of factors associated with mobile rotational work contribute to depression, fatigue, stress, and related challenges. These factors include frequency and length of absences from families and social networks, jarring adjustments between on- and off-shift lives, the controlled routines and regulations of camp living, isolation in remote locations, extended and nonstandard working hours, the vagaries of boom and bust cycles, and 24/7 productivity demands. We examine the conditions of mental health and wellbeing as experienced by camp-based mobile workers in the oil sands of northern Alberta. Using a social determinants of mental health approach, and a combination of face-to-face surveys and in-depth interviews, the project will generate understanding of the lived experiences of mental health among long-distance labour commuters.
Date created

2018-12-16
Subjects / Keywords
Type of Item

Research Material
DOI

https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-m0ck-0g68